Ranco Electronic Temperature Controller

If you are serious about homebrewing, you will find that temperature control is essential to a great batch of beer. If you live in a perfect climate (i.e. a cave in Colorado), then you may not have to worry so much, however in Alabama, keeping an ale brewing at 68 degrees F in the middle of summer is quite a challenge. Therefore, we resort to making a chest freezer a tightly controlled fermentation chamber with the use of an electronic temperature controller.

I’m quite thrifty with my brewing equipment, partly due to wanting to save money, and the other part is to try and make as much equipment as possible. I wasn’t about to make my own temperature controller, but I did buy mine without wiring, and I hope to make this easy for those who aren’t technically inclined.

First, open up the ETC, and you will find three blocks of wire posts (probably two on the single stage controller), which are basically screws that you unscrew, slip in the wire, and screw back down (no soldering required!). The challenge is making all the wires you want to fit in one fit, and screw down without coming out.

In any case, to get started, you need to buy some extension cords (I got mine at Big Lots for about 5 bucks a piece). Once you get them, you will need to cut off the part you plug in the wall of two of them (or one in single stage), and they will be the new receptacle for the freezer or heater. After that, when you pull back the wires, and strip off the ends, you will have three wires: green (ground), white (neutral), and black (power). In the box, as you should notice in the picture (click to enlarge), the green wires are all connected together (the temperature controller doesn’t have a ground). Therefore the electrical flow is ground from wall to ground of the two outlets that are being controlled. Now the white (neutral) would be the same way, however the ETC needs to be powered up, so it has to get connected to the white as well. Cut some extra white wire off, and run it from the COM on the ETC to the white, and put the white from the two outlets together. Now the part that the relay works on is the Black wire. You choose if it is 240 or 120 by which post you put it on. Mine is 120, so there is a black wire going in to the 120 from the power wire that plugs into the wall, and two wires coming out of the same post to the C post (3rd post for stage 1, and second post for stage 2). Then the black from the two outlets to be controlled is terminated in the NO slots (second post for stage 1, and 3rd post for stage 2).

Before putting it all back together, verify that no stripped part of one color wire touches another (i.e. stripped white part touches stripped black part). If unsure, take it all apart and do it again.

Cost:
Ranco ETC Dual Stage unwired: $105
Extension Cords with 3 receptacle outlets (x2): $8
Extension Cord to power the Ranco ETC: $3
8.9 Cubic Ft. Freezer: $250
60 watt heater pad: $20
Making Great beer: Priceless

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