Has anyone used a McMaster blanket heater with their conical?

[1fastsedan]

I started fermenting on my back patio last year. Living in a warm climate, most of my concern was for chilling and I have that handled with a coil, pump, etc.

However, I'm having trouble this "winter" keeping temps up for ales. I've tried reptile heaters and a heating blanket, but neither have been powerful enough for a 15 gallon batch.

By my calculations (which could easily be wrong) I need somewhere around 500 watts to raise 17 gallons by 30 degrees over 3 hours. I know I won't really need to heat things up this much, but clearly my 65 watt reptile heater is insufficient.

Has anyone tried one of these blanket heaters from Mcmaster on stainless conical?
https://www.mcmaster.com/35765k261
or these
https://www.mcmaster.com/8009t19

Looks like this might work too...
http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-5...0001&campid=5338413729&icep_item=332188655433

 

[505-Brewer]

I have not used those but can offer the following.

I use a 10 gal igloo cooler, a heating pad from amazon and an inkbird controller. Make sure the heating pad doesn’t have auto off feature. Also get a thermowell so temp probe/controller is measuring the beer temp. Slide heating pad down side between carboy and cooler. Cover w a towel. Bonus: In the summer you can use water and ice to maintain temps to. At high Krausen 10 ice cubes can drop the temp a degree or two - doesn’t take much.

Its going to be like 9 degrees F tonight and my barley wines are in the (cold!) garage at a steady 68F. When its cold you can easily do ramps w the inkbird. I pitched at 64F and have been ramping it 1 deg per day and am holding. Will dry hop tomorrow.

I can ramp to 100F for souring easy with this setup.

Small investment but so versatile!