I just recently bought a small chest freezer to put my carboys in for fermentation. Also bought a Johnson controller to control the temperature. It’s is pretty small chest freezer and fits two 6 gallon carboy’s inside with a little bit of room around them. It is pretty hard to read my fermometers that are pasted on the sides of the carboys without pulling out the carboys. I’m wondering if anybody has had any experience with using an infrared thermometer to check the temperature of their fermenting wort. I know generally light isn’t good and I’m wondering if the infrared thermometer is going to cause any off flavors. Also if anybody has any suggestions on a specific brand of infrared thermometer that would be helpful as well.
The light from the infrared thermometers won’t hurt your beer, but if you act on the inaccurate info you get from them, that could hurt your beer. Those things are not reliable, and the reading you will get will change based on the reflectivity of the surface you are trying to measure.
What he said…Hard to get an accurate temp on a shiny object, ( glass or liquid), with an I R thermometer.
They work pretty good on other objects though.
I have the same setup and normally set my temp on low side of what I want. I don’t check anything after its set and haven’t had any issues.
I used to put a large glass of water in my freeze with a thermometer in it. I have a chest freezer that holds only one carboy. That worked. But now I just wrap the Johnson controllers external probe in a plastic baggie, tape the top of the Baggie shut and place that in the quart container of water. Seems to do well reading liquid temperature.
