Thermometer Recommendation Please

[AndrewCowley]

I'd like to monitor the temperature of some wine I have stored in a wardrobe. This is to build a case (or not) to get it out of there and into proper offsite storage. What sort of thermometer should I use for this? Obviously I won't be around all day to note down the temperature readings, so I need something that either stores a log over time or records the min / max temperature. Can anyone recommend something decent?

BTW has anyone here used Wine Vault's small 18-20 case private lockers at their Artarmon site? This is what I might need and wonder what experience people have with them. Worries me a bit that you don't get proper wine racks and instead have to stack your cases and then it would be difficult to go in there from time to time and grab bottles from here and there to drink in the next few months. Breaking into cases, re-casing where required and generally needing to move everything around to accomodate removing 6-12 bottles at a time could be a pain. Unless you stack your cases with your 'drink soon' stuff near the top but that would be hard to pre-empt.

[Waiters Friend]

G'day Andrew

The cellar has a hygrometer, which measures current, maximum and minimum temperatures and humidity reached since the last reset. It's not only maximum temperature you're looking for, but also the range or spread over a period of time. Likewise with humidity (although this is less critical unless it is too low, and the corks are drying out - less of a problem in these days of screwcap).

I think you can pick up a reasonable one (battery powered) around $50. Gavin may even sell them.

Cheers

Allan

[pstarr]

Sounds like a basic thermo/hygrometer jobbie should do you fine. I have a cheap one I used to use when storing a lot of wine at home. It had a sensor on the unit and a remote sensor on a wire, so it could record external (ie room) temps and humidity while the probe could cover temperature in a cupboard/box, whatever. That worked fine for me.

There are also reasonably cheap data loggers available now if you want to be able to pull trend data off and dump it into Excel or whatever. We did a bit of logging of Canberra District winery wine storage conditions when planning the design of the passively-cooled, super-insulated storage building at Quarry Hill, and I can probably track down details of the loggers we used if it's that kind of thing you are interested in.

[GRB]

Mine was a cheapy that logs min/max temp and humidity, I got if from Dick Smith IIRC.

Glen

[AndrewCowley]

Mine was a cheapy that logs min/max temp and humidity, I got if from Dick Smith IIRC.

Glen

Cool. I just went to Dick Smith and bought what sounds like the same. Hope it works ok.