Freezing beer - gpeipman/TemperatureStation GitHub Wiki
Freezing beer and removing sludge or ice from it helps to raise the alcohol content of beer. Perhaps most famos type of beers that are make stronger by freezing are eisbocks brewed in Germany.
Making at home eisbock or any other beer that needs freezing is challenging for home brewers. Main reasons are:
- opening fermenting or cooling bucket may end up with infected yeast or polluted beer,
- it takes time for 23 litres or 5 gallons of beer to freeze,
- all changes in temperature are coming with big inertia.
TemperatureStation with two thermal sensors is great help when freezing beer. One sensor measures ambient temperature and the other one beer temperature. TemperatureStation is able to read and report both readings with no additional coding. Using TemperatureStation site it is possible to see latest readings and cooling chart. There's no need to sit days next to bucket and wait.
In the beginning of year 2017 I made my first cooling session with current codebase of TemperatureStation. I had one Christmas brew that turned out too light and I wanted to boost alcohol content of it.
There were some really cold days in row where temperature jumped between -8 and -13 degrees of Celsius. I moved fermenting bucket to balcony, connected Raspberry Pi and sensors, and started with freezing. Image below shows my bucket with Raspberry Pi connected.
TBC.