Скачать или смотреть Budget lagering trick

Using the great outdoors to lager beer is a great way to make winter your friend. But if you live in an area that gets a lot of temperature variations, or it's just too cold for yeast to ferment, you need some way to stabilize the temperature.

Normally a fermentation chamber is the way to go: insulated, with a cooling system, they allow you to lager all year 'round. But if you don't have that kind of room, or if you're on a budget, there's a way around it.

You can take a large pail--a garbage can will do just fine--fill it with water, put your fermenter into it, and put it all outside in a sheltered area. Wrap it with a heating element controlled by a thermostat, set it at the minimum temperature for your lager yeast and drop a the probe into the water in the pail.

This way you don't have to insert the temperature probe into your keg, and the extra thermal mass of the water ensures that any temperature swings are heavily buffered and happen slowly.

Of course you'll need to insulate the pail and keep everything out of the rain and snow. But it's a cheap way to lager your beer at stable temperatures.

I've added a spunding valve to this setup, so that I can ferment under pressure, for added fun.

Do you have any Rube Goldberg contraptions? How do they work out for you?