Vent: That $200 temperature controller I bought for my fermentation fridge

I dropped $200 on an Inkbird ITC-308 for my beer fermentation setup in the garage. First batch, it held steady at 68F like a champ for three days, then the probe slipped and my lager hit 75F overnight. Ruined the whole batch, about 50 bucks in ingredients down the drain. Anyone else had a cheap probe fail on them, or am I just unlucky?

3 comments

3 Comments

kevin_west26d agoTop Commenter

Taped the probe to the side of my fermenter with electrical tape after my third ruined batch and that worked for a while until the tape let go in the middle of the night. My neighbor's dog started barking at 3 AM and I woke up to a 78 degree stout that tasted like bandaids and regret. At least you learned the lesson early like I did, now I keep a backup thermowell in every bucket and check the probe placement twice before I go to bed. Sometimes I think these controllers are designed to fail at the worst possible moment just to keep us humble.

emma_dixon7026d ago

Does that make me the tape or the regret in this story?

sarah_patel2526d ago

Oh, "tasted like bandaids and regret" - that line got me. I've had that exact same flavor in a batch before and it's just heartbreaking after all that work. Sorry you had to learn that lesson the hard way too, but at least we know better now.