What have people found to be the best fermenters and best way to control temp?
What kind of space and money do you have for them? That’s the most important factor.
Best is gonna be subjective for everyone. I use 3 Grainfather conicals and their glycol chiller
I use an old fridge on a temp controller to ferment in so the BrewBucket was the perfect size for me.
Those glycol cooled fermenters are awesome and when my old fridge dies I may go down that road. …but that probably won’t be any time soon because I bought it used ~30 yrs ago and it’s still kickin.
Live in Wisconsin and will be using a basement. Not heated
I use 5 gallon corny kegs with a floating dip tube on the out post and a spunding valve attached to the gas post for fermenting 3 gallon batches. I generally ferment ales at ambient in my basement. For lagers and cold crashing I have a chest freezer with an external temp control. This doubled as a keezer until I got a separate kegerator. I also ferment lagers under pressure at ambient from time to time.
I live in PA and also ferment in a basement, no temp control. (Because of this I choose my yeast wisely. 
) I use a Speidel because they are very easy to clean. And I like easy.
+1
Monitored speidel fermenters (5.3 gal, 20L) in basement, to see how much above ambient it actually goes.
So I add 4-5 degrees above basement ambient, and thats what I use for yeast selection.
Depending on time of year, basement has a peak high of 66F (heat wave, 100+), and low in mid 50’s.
Thanks everyone for your advice
I keep wondering - what are these magical basement places y’all keep mentioning?
And Biglare - definitely follow Fire Rooster’s advice and start tracking your temperatures so you’ll know what you’re dealing with.
northern california checking in, ditto!
For me I use a brew bucket with the brewjacket.
I use 2-gallon food-grade buckets and a window unit to cool a small fermentation box.
Chest Freezer and a converted 16 gallon keg with a corny lid. Even with that, I’m disappointed with my latest beer as I’m picking up a little bit of fueled alcohol. That’s with a TILT and what I thought was propping pitching. Still tastes good, but not exactly what I’m after. However, like someone said, I’m going to try and learn from the temp pattern I used and the yeast that I used. The journey is most of the fun of brewing, I think.
Basement, translated into its southern declension, would be “three car garage”.
Spike conicals with a homemade glycol chiller.
I still do the basement thing here in New England. I always intended to add temp control but it’s just worked out so I never bothered. I have an especially deep cellar that is in the sixties late September through May, with a few degrees variance between spots so I can check temps and choose. I can even do lager temps in my root cellar January through March. I occasionally cold crash outside.
What will eventually get me to go to controlling temps is the desire to make lagers for summer.
I use plastic fermenters but am considering getting a couple of ten gallon corny kegs to ferment in.
For clean beers I have a small fridge and most of those beers are fermented in the same fermentation bucket I first started brewing with eleven years ago. Smaller batches go in 4l jugs.
If I were starting over I would seriously consider some of the jacketed conicals. They are more expensive for sure but overall more energy and space efficient.
[quote]Spike conicals with a homemade glycol chiller.
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I have the same setup. I really like it.
I ferment in a heated basement in a 6.5 gallon spigoted plastic big mouth bubbler (no syponing!). it stays 67 - 72 F year round in my basement (in Maryland USA).
Regards,
Doug
I’d be careful, that range seems a little higher than I’d be comfortable with. Fermentation temps can run quite a bit higher than ambient. If the room is at 72F, your beer will possibly get to 78F or higher during peak fermentation.