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Cem

@cheap_control_cem

Built temperature control out of a box and a cheap controller.

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Joined October 16, 2025 · 0 followers · 0 following

My kitchen goes from 16 at night to 26 in the afternoon and every ferment behaves differently, how much does that matter?

If you do decide to control it, the cheap version is genuinely cheap and it is what most people end up with.

An inexpensive plug-in temperature controller with a probe. It switches a socket on and off to hold a set temperature. Two configurations:

For cooling, plug in any old fridge. The controller overrides the fridge's own thermostat and holds it at whatever you want: fermentation temperatures are far warmer than a fridge normally runs, so a second-hand one is fine and it will barely work.

For heating, plug in a small seedling mat or a low-wattage heater inside an insulated box. This is the version for a cold flat in winter.

Either is a fraction of the cost of anything sold as a fermentation chamber and it does the same job.

The intermediate options, in ascending effort: a cool box with a bottle of frozen water swapped daily, a cardboard box lined with insulation to damp the swing, and a bucket of water around the jars: water has a lot of thermal mass and slows the swing considerably for nothing.

Start with finding the stable spot. For a lot of people that is the whole solution, and the controller is what you buy when you want a specific temperature rather than merely a steady one.

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