Inkbird Heating or Cooling PID Temperature Controller IPB-16S Pre-Wired Digital Home Brewing Controller Independent Control Pump Thermostat

This review is on the new IPB-16S pre-wired Digital Home Brewing controller. I’ve looked at a number of drawings on doing a DIY for a PID controller but stayed away from the project because of not feeling comfortable in following the schematic drawings. So, when I saw the IPB-16S controller it appeared to be the solution to my need. Received the unit two days after ordering and was able to brew with it a couple of days later. What’s cool about the controller, it is definitely plug and play, the only modification I had to make was installing mounting screws and setting the mash temperature. The unit worked great maintaining the set temperature for my HERMS for home brewing. I have a small pump to recirculate the hot water in the HERMS and it was nice to have the pump control alongside the heat temperature control, very convenient. Would like if the input supported 20A @ 120V, with the higher amp rating I could also use to control one of my brew kettle DIY 2000-watt heat sticks. Once I set the mash temperature it maintained that set temperature for the hour log mash schedule, no hiccups and no chasing a temperature. The units fit and finish looks and feels great with a heavy-duty quality metal case, switch, two receptacles, electrical cord and temperature probe input. Overall the look and feel of the product is high-quality. The cord is very heavy duty measuring 42 inches. The unit is grounded, but I would like to see ground fault protection, if that’s possible, rather than have to plug it into a GFCI outlet for protection. The short cord or GFCI protection was not an issue for me because my 120v GFCI source is only a couple of feet away. I’m not sure if the probe is water proof, read somewhere that said that it is, and, in another post, it said it was not. During my BrewDay I did not have any issues with the probe submerged in water. If and when the included probe fails, I will purchase a probe that clearly states it’s water proof, but on the positive side the cord is 6 feet long. A great purchase and well recommended, saved me time and maybe money, if I were to build my own PID controller. Lastly, I own a couple other types of Inkbird controllers that I have purchased over the last few years and all are great quality and are all still working.

This works great and for the price you can’t beat it

This works great for maintaining madh temps on my homebuilt electric brewpot. Pretty simple if you want but can also adjust multiple parameters. Keeps temp within 0.1-0.2 F at the probe; maintaining circulation keeps the whole mash at that temp. Probe is accurate to a few tenths degree F compared to my Thermapen. Sometimes the probe cable doesn't make a good connection to the port and this can affect accuracy. It uses a headphone style jack so this is a worry long term. The temp setting always resets itself and it takes a loooooong time to adjust from the initial setting (68 or something, I can’t remember) to the target temp since it goes by tenths. Note it gets used at most once a week without being powered in between. Fit and finish is great with heavy duty, quality case, swich, receptacles and cord. Overall highly recommended. Minus one star for the temp probe connector design.

I built a 110V RIMS pipe to recirculate wort during beer brewing. I selected the Inkbird IPB-16S controller because its features matched my needs and their price point was excellent compared to other products. It was ready to go right out of the box. I plugged in the heating element and the pump and put the temperature probe in a thermowell on the pipe. Resetting the target temperature was easy and the PID accurately attained and managed the target temperature very well. To date, I have experienced no issues with this unit. My use is restricted to heat management, although other users might be interested that the PID can be used for cooling as well. The unit comes with a temperature probe and an instruction booklet. The instruction booklet could be improved as its English is rough and sometimes difficult to understand (deducted one star on ease of use). Overall, I'm very happy with this PID.

While it worked, it did a great job. But the unit failed after about 2 hours of use. If you are looking for a way to waste your money, this is it. And, to top it off, no help from the vender or Amazon. I'm P.O.'ed at Amazon for having such a poor vender on their site. Even though I contacted Amazon, nothing. I'm out of luck all around. The vender is some company out of China that no one has ever heard of and apparently doesn't care if their product is crap.

I ordered three of these units to control the temperature of brews. I shopped a long time for the right one and ended up buying these guys for way more than i budgeted for temperature controllers. I was going to build my own out of component pieces but when i found these I splurged, and I am glad I did. Why reinvent the wheel when someone else has already made a great controller that does exactly what i need it to? they are very well built: solid aluminum casing, 12ga wire inside, 12ga power cord, quality switches and controls. I did have an issue with one of them. It would trip the breaker when it was under load. I contacted inkbird, they were very responsive and quickly sent me a brand new one. the customer service was very good - way better than i expected.

I used this controller for about 7 months with 1-2 brews per month so about 10-11 brews total. Now its busted, the power on off switch melted and stopped working. I messaged Inkbird for a replacement. we will c what they say.

I've used quite a few different temperature controllers over the years to manage my fermentation temperature for homebrewing. I went through the usual suspects from Johnson and Ranco, and eventually built myself a PID temperature controller about 8 years ago or so. It works great, but cost somewhere around $50-$60 in parts and looks like a DIY project. At some point, I needed a temperature controller for my keezer, which didn't need to be as precise. I picked up an Inkbird ITC-310T that has served admirably for the task. Now, I have a lagering freezer in addition to a chest freezer (keezer). That means I needed (wanted) another PID controller, and I didn't really feel like building one from scratch, so I sought something cleaner. Enter the Inkbird IPB-16. Based on my good experience with the ITC-310T, I ordered one. It looks great and functions excellently. If you care about fermentation temperature control for your homebrewing, this is the one to get. It has all of the usual awesome stuff that PID controllers have, such as auto-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 miserably confusing instructions that took me ages to fully understand. With my IPB-16, I'm putting it through the paces with a glycol chiller and a Brewers Hardware jacketed conical fermentor. It's doing an outstanding job of holding temps even prior to self tuning. The only negative thing I have to say about it is that it doesn't come with a waterproof thermal probe. At the price and for the purposes it's going to be used for, it should. I've decided not to reduce my rating by 1 star since I don't actually need a waterproof probe with my thermowell (though I'll likely buy one anyway). Highly recommended!