Solution to NOT buying an Air Conditioner?!

SO i will be moving into a house in the next few weeks that has an awesome room in the basement for keeping my fermenting and conditioning brews, just about 8 by 6 or so. I plan of leaving the ac off as much as possible to help cut back on energy use and $ of course, but would like to keep this room a constant 66-70 degrees. I have looked into getting an ac unit but there really is nothing that would work without having a window, or having to pay a lot of money. Instead of blowing a few hundred bucks on an ac (thats like eight batches of beer!) I am looking for a solution to keeping this room chilled at a reasonable cost. I didnt know if just keeping an ice bath or a dozen frozen 2-liter bottle in the room would be enough to do the trick. Hopefully someone has encountered this problem before and has a great solution for me! any and all ideas are welcome and thanks in advance for the hlp

It all depends on how hot it gets above grade. My basement is always in at least the low 70s, unless it gets crazy hot outside. Even at those temps, fussing with ice to keep a room cool sounds like a total disaster to me. You'd really need a lot of it and a fan to keep the air moving. It would work to some degree, but man, I can't imagine the size of swamp cooler you'd need to really make a difference, even in a small space like you're describing. You're just fighting so much surface area. I'd look into one of those portable air conditioners that are on the market now. I think you just need some way to vent to the ouside with them. You aren't confined to actually sticking it in a window like the window units that are out there. Just my two cents though.

You can keep your beer in a swamp cooler of ice-water, but cooling the entire room isn't going to be easy or cheap without an AC. As mentioned, vent it outside somehow. I think the portable ones have a hose that you can route outside, right?

Ya the only thing I have seen are portable swamp coolers. I will look more into an actually ac but again i do not want to spend a few hundred dollars. the entire basement is on central air but also do not want to keep the entire house at 68 degrees all summer. I believe i will only have to lower the temp in the room five degrees, maybe at most ten degrees, but would like to keep it right under 70 all summer

finsfan said:

Ya the only thing I have seen are portable swamp coolers. I will look more into an actually ac but again i do not want to spend a few hundred dollars. the entire basement is on central air but also do not want to keep the entire house at 68 degrees all summer. I believe i will only have to lower the temp in the room five degrees, maybe at most ten degrees, but would like to keep it right under 70 all summer

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Craigslist is your friend. Before it get's wicked hot you should be able to get a window unit for <$100. What's the rest of the basement like? What if you mounted the window unit in the wall or door to this smaller room? Sure it would vent warm air out into the rest of the basement, but do you care?

I would second a swamp cooler. I use it in my basement and it works great for me. I use a round tub, but the carboy in it and fill it up half way with water. The excess water keeps the temp pretty constant. You can put ice packs in the to lower the temp more.

well the entire basement in underground, with only four windows but is all on central air. I am planning to build a bar in the basement and use this area as a man cave but really wouldnt mind the extra heat from an ac unit, as it will probably not be in heavy use every day. I will check craigslist because i just checked home depot and the cheapest portable unit is $230. There is no window in the small brew room but could build my own door that holds a window unit and make it work. If it leads to that and i have to run an ac all summer i may lager for 3 or 4 months

finsfan said:

well the entire basement in underground, with only four windows but is all on central air. I am planning to build a bar in the basement and use this area as a man cave but really wouldnt mind the extra heat from an ac unit, as it will probably not be in heavy use every day. I will check craigslist because i just checked home depot and the cheapest portable unit is $230. There is no window in the small brew room but could build my own door that holds a window unit and make it work. If it leads to that and i have to run an ac all summer i may lager for 3 or 4 months

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I'd be really surprised if you can't find a small window air for $75 or so.

Why not build a fermentation chamber for that room (or just outside it), and use the room temperature of the room for conditioning/storing. The smaller the space the easier it will be to use ice to keep fermentation temperatures down, thus an actual chamber for fermentation. The less you generate heat INSIDE that room the less the temperatures will fluctuate/rise. Conduction (water bath) cooling is far more efficient than convection (air movement/swamp cooler).

If it were me, and I didn't want to buy anything or build anything, I would use a water bath with ice or swamp cooler for fermentation just outside the room. When fermentation slowed or stopped I would move the fermenter inside the room for conditioning. I'd also store my bottles inside the room for conditioning.

Lastly, I have a basement and a central air system. My house is not optimized for A/C so if I set my thermostat to 70F it will keep my upstairs around 70F; my basement on the other hand will be almost 10F degrees cooler (around 60F). Are you certain that your house wont work similarly?

stpug said:

Lastly, I have a basement and a central air system. My house is not optimized for A/C so if I set my thermostat to 70F it will keep my upstairs around 70F; my basement on the other hand will be almost 10F degrees cooler (around 60F). Are you certain that your house wont work similarly?

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Mine works the same. Upstairs is so hot I have to have a window AC up there whereas main-level is good and basement is at least another 5-7* cooler than that.

There are a lot of ways to control for temps, as you can see, but they can be either expensive, time consuming, or both. I'll just throw this out there, even though you didn't ask about it. Why not look at the problem from the other end?

Here's what I mean. As you move in, find a way to keep track of ambient temps, and then adjust your brewing seasonally as you see fit. Find yeast strains that work well within the temps you see, and do things the old fashioned way. It's worked well for me, and it's much less of a headache than switching out frozen water bottles and such. My basement is crazy and swings between 50F in the winter to over 75F in the summer. I just roll with it. Winters I use 2565 and 1728 and the occasional lager strain, summers I make saisons, and spring and autumn are great for Trappist and British styles. I don't have the ability to make whatever I want when I want it, but this method is inexpensive and easy to maintain.

As others have said, if you aren't worried about cooling the entire room, just fermenting beer, then a simple swamp cooler would work for fermenting the beer in. Or look into the fermentation chambers that use ice jugs that people have built on here. I have to admit, I love my AC, once it gets much above 80 in the upper level of our house, the AC is on. I'll find a way to pay for it. So, in my basement I never have to deal with temps over 68 or 70 degrees. Heck, just dropping an ice pack in with the fermenter, then draping a towel over both usually keeps it in the mid 60s during fermentation.

Thank you all for the great suggestions. I do not know exactly how cold the basement will get but will know hopefully by the 20th when we move in. I hope that it does what some of you have suggested and stays ten degrees colder then the rest of the house and i will not have to do a darn thing to keep this room in perfect fermenting temp (crossing my fingers very hard!). If anything it would be pretty simple to leave the carboy in a chilled bath with a towel around it to keep it cooler.

finsfan said:

Thank you all for the great suggestions. I do not know exactly how cold the basement will get but will know hopefully by the 20th when we move in. I hope that it does what some of you have suggested and stays ten degrees colder then the rest of the house and i will not have to do a darn thing to keep this room in perfect fermenting temp (crossing my fingers very hard!). If anything it would be pretty simple to leave the carboy in a chilled bath with a towel around it to keep it cooler.

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Well, cold air falls, so if you keep the upstairs in the 70's, basement should be in the 60's somewhere, fine for most ales. I'd still use a swamp cooler to buffer the temp change as fermentation heats up. A few frozen water bottles a day for a couple of the most active fermentation days is all it would take.

that seems to be a good idea and cheap as well. for the long term i may look into building a fermentation chamber that i saw on billybrew.com it seems like the perfect way to keep constant temperature with minimal work involved once constructed.

My upstairs has central air kept at 75° in the summer. My basement stays between 62° & 66° depending on outside temps. My bare concrete floor is usually a few degrees cooler. I start my fermentation with the carboy on the floor with a small fan blowing. Actual wort temps never get above 64°.

djt17 said:

My upstairs has central air kept at 75° in the summer. My basement stays between 62° & 66° depending on outside temps. My bare concrete floor is usually a few degrees cooler. I start my fermentation with the carboy on the floor with a small fan blowing. Actual wort temps never get above 64°.

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Are you using a thermowell with probe to get internal beer temps?

I think i may of found a combined solution to my problem! i may buy an old freezer chest and convert it into a fermenting chamber. I could use the design provided here http://home.roadrunner.com/~brewbeer/chiller/chiller.PDF and modify it to fit inside the freezer and could not have to worry about damaging the outside or buying the EXP for the outside walls. here is a freezer that i may look into purchasing http://ksu.craigslist.org/app/3773535231.html
let me know if any of you have done this or think it is a good idea to try

I have a house similar to what you have explained and one thing I would point out is you may depending on you location need to run a dehumidifier if you run no ac down there especially if its a finished basement. Just wanted to give you a heads up and something else to think about

I have thought about that but it s not a finished basement. I dont think the humidity will effect anything that is fermenting/conditioning down there. I will be brewing and bottling upstairs in the kitchen so still i dont think it will be a problem.

using an ac unit or buying/making ice to chill the beer will all cost money, the best option would be to create a well insulated fermentation chamber/ room
once the ac unit gets the room to temp, it should loose little cold and cost very little to maintain

finsfan said:

I think i may of found a combined solution to my problem! i may buy an old freezer chest and convert it into a fermenting chamber. I could use the design provided here http://home.roadrunner.com/~brewbeer/chiller/chiller.PDF and modify it to fit inside the freezer and could not have to worry about damaging the outside or buying the EXP for the outside walls. here is a freezer that i may look into purchasing http://ksu.craigslist.org/app/3773535231.html
let me know if any of you have done this or think it is a good idea to try

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Yeah, that's what most people do. That or a fridge. You can build the temp controller easily, too. Still going to run you over $100, but not several hundred if you buy used.

tre9er said:

Are you using a thermowell with probe to get internal beer temps?

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I am using a Fermometer. http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/fermometer.html

djt17 said:

I am using a Fermometer. http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/fermometer.html

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ah. Reason I asked is that it would be very odd if the true internal beer temp was only a few degrees warmer than ambient at the hottest point of fermentation. It's routine for the beer to be 5-10 degrees hotter, in fact. The fermometer captures the outermost temp, which is more greatly affected by ambient temp. Internal temps would be at least a few degrees higher, porobably several.

tre9er said:

ah. Reason I asked is that it would be very odd if the true internal beer temp was only a few degrees warmer than ambient at the hottest point of fermentation. It's routine for the beer to be 5-10 degrees hotter, in fact. The fermometer captures the outermost temp, which is more greatly affected by ambient temp. Internal temps would be at least a few degrees higher, porobably several.

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I have a long stem calibrated lab thermometer that I used a few times during fermentation to test the accuracy of my fermometer. It was always within 2° of the fermometer reading.

Im actually just using a fridge now, much more cost effective since it was free

Probably a lot cheaper than trying to keep an entire room temperature controlled!

Darwin18 said:

Probably a lot cheaper than trying to keep an entire room temperature controlled!

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O yeah haha I was a nooby when that idea struck me.

GuldTuborg said:

There are a lot of ways to control for temps, as you can see, but they can be either expensive, time consuming, or both. I'll just throw this out there, even though you didn't ask about it. Why not look at the problem from the other end?

Here's what I mean. As you move in, find a way to keep track of ambient temps, and then adjust your brewing seasonally as you see fit. Find yeast strains that work well within the temps you see, and do things the old fashioned way. It's worked well for me, and it's much less of a headache than switching out frozen water bottles and such. My basement is crazy and swings between 50F in the winter to over 75F in the summer. I just roll with it. Winters I use 2565 and 1728 and the occasional lager strain, summers I make saisons, and spring and autumn are great for Trappist and British styles. I don't have the ability to make whatever I want when I want it, but this method is inexpensive and easy to maintain.

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I like this approach. I have a walk out basement, underground on one side and ground level on the other. No AC or heat in there but I've noticed that temps are pretty stable night or day with the exception that in the summer it will get 4 - 5 degrees warmer near the exposed south wall than on the buried north wall. Winter temps average 52 - 55, summers are high 60s to low 70s - sometimes 77 or 78 near the south wall on a hot afternoon. I think the suggestion to brew consistent with ambient temps is a good one.

Just FYI: A window AC unit will cost about 10-20X more on your electric bill to chill a room of that size than 1 large freezer with a temp control would to lager beer at 35F. Personally I'd just grap a large freezer or fridge on Craigslist for $50-$100 and then build a temp controller ($30). You could then ferment in there at any temp you wanted.

Insulate the ceiling of the room and down the walls to about a foot below ground. the ceiling in my old house was insulated and i dont remember it ever reaching 70F