Review on Inkbird IPB-16S Pre-Wired Digital Temperature Controller for Home Brewing: Heating/Cooling with Independent Pump Control and Thermostat by Major Callaham

Over the years I have used a few different temperature controllers to control the fermentation temperature in home brewing. I went through the usual suspects from Johnson and Ranko and finally built myself a PID temperature controller about 8 years ago. It works great but costs around $50-60 in parts and looks like a DIY project. At some point I needed a temperature controller for my Keezer that wasn't supposed to be that accurate. I took the Inkbird ITC-310T which did its job perfectly. I now have a larger freezer in addition to a Keezer freezer. This means I needed (wanted) a different PID controller and didn't really feel like building one from scratch, so I looked for something cleaner. Enter Inkbird IPB-16. Because of my good experiences with the ITC-310T, I ordered it. It looks great and works great. If you're interested in controlling fermentation temperature in home brewing, this is for you. It has all the usual great features that PID controllers have such as: B. Automatic tuning for your system to avoid overshoot. One nice thing is that I can actually understand the instructions. It's not perfect English, but my other controller (JLD614) has terribly convoluted instructions that took me forever to fully understand. Using my IPB-16, I'm testing it with a glycol chiller and jacketed conical fermentor from Brewers Hardware. It does an excellent job of maintaining temperature even before auto-tuning. The only downside I have to say about this is that it doesn't have a waterproof thermal sensor. For the price and for the purposes it is intended to be used for, it should. I've decided not to downgrade my rating by 1 star as I don't really need a waterproof probe with a protective tube (although I'll probably buy one anyway). Highly recommended!