Swamp cooler and temperature control

[Superstorm]

Hey everyone, I was planning on brewing in the next couple days and I'm still trying to figure out how I'm gonna keep my wort cool in this hot summer weather. Where I live, it gets pretty hot and stays in the 80's and 90's every day during summer and then gets cooler in the evenings and nights. I usually ferment in a closet and I've been monitoring the temperature in there. The temperature is about 82-83 degrees in the closet throughout the day and my wort needs to be kept at 62 degrees. I was thinking of making a swamp cooler with some cold water and some frozen water bottles or the wet towel method, but there's no outlets nearby so I can't plug fans in. Someone on another thread that I was reading said that you can use an aquarium heater in your water bath to keep it at your desired temperature. Has anyone else used one for this and been successful? Are there any other things I should know to make sure that my wort stays at 62 degrees?


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[Newsman]

Aquarium heater would WARM the water. You could run an extension cord to the area where the closet is and use that to provide power for the fan.

 

[duboman]

Yea, an aquarium heater will not help you. Place the vessel in a large tub, fill with cold water and add frozen water bottles to bring the temp down. You will most likely have to swap the bottles twice per day to maintain your desired temp.

 

[drummerguy]

I started using a swamp cooler with my last batch and didn't use a fan at all. I simply filled the tub with water and switched out frozen water bottles as necessary. I usually ended up with two or three bottles in there at a time, which seemed to work very well. The water in the tub stayed around 63 degrees most of the time, and the makeshift temperature probe I had taped the bucket usually read 66-69 degrees. I mostly went by the reading on the probe and constantly tried to keep it lower. However, when I pulled out a sample to test the gravity, the temperature of was almost always 2-3 degrees cooler than what the probe was reading. It's not as good as a refrigerator, but it did the job for me.

 

[rodwha]

I had to keep several 2 liter and 1 liter water bottles to keep mine in the mid 60's in a room that was kept 74-5*. And it takes at least 24 hrs for a big bottle to completely freeze. It took up half of a large freezer.

 

[stevehardt]

I had a similar problem. I bought a large cooler big enough to hold my fermenter with the lid closed. kept frozen water bottles in it. No water, no fans, more even temps. Works like a charm

 

[tooldudetool]

This is what I do: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/diy-fermentation-chiller-using-my-mash-tun-wort-chiller-438154/

Keeps temperature far more accurately than randomly adding and removing frozen water bottles to the swamp cooler, and if you have most of the stuff already, its really quite inexpensive.

 

[Superstorm]

Thanks guys This has all been really helpful! But should I use cold water that has been in the fridge or room temperature/sink water for the bath? And is it going to be really hard to control the temperature in a room that doesn't drop below 80?


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[rodwha]

It ought to be colder water, but it needs to be kept colder. You cannot just allow it to eventually warm up to room temp.

In this situation you're likely to be better off doing as tooldude did as just ice bottles in water at 80* will melt them more quickly than mid 70's, and I had to change my bottles 2-3 times a day.

If maintaining a temp like this is too difficult you'll either need to brew with Belgian yeasts (or any others) that do well at a higher temp or invest in a fermentation chamber.

Skitter has built a nice small fermentation chamber sized for 2 Mr Beer fermentors that uses a temp controller, a fan, and ice bottles, and it works quite well for him. It doesn't appear much larger than an end table.

 

[Superstorm]

It ought to be colder water, but it needs to be kept colder. You cannot just allow it to eventually warm up to room temp.

In this situation you're likely to be better off doing as tooldude did as just ice bottles in water at 80* will melt them more quickly than mid 70's, and I had to change my bottles 2-3 times a day.

If maintaining a temp like this is too difficult you'll either need to brew with Belgian yeasts (or any others) that do well at a higher temp or invest in a fermentation chamber.

Skitter has built a nice small fermentation chamber sized for 2 Mr Beer fermentors that uses a temp controller, a fan, and ice bottles, and it works quite well for him. It doesn't appear much larger than an end table.

I would so that if I could, but I don't have the money. I'm brewing an ale and I heard they're less sensitive to temperature, but I don't know if that was right or not. I'm gonna have to go with the cold water and frozen bottle method. But after I cool down the wort to pitch the yeast, should I put it in the cold water right away or would that get it too cold? It needs to be at 62*


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[Superstorm]

I would so that if I could, but I don't have the money. I'm brewing an ale and I heard they're less sensitive to temperature, but I don't know if that was right or not. I'm gonna have to go with the cold water and frozen bottle method. But after I cool down the wort to pitch the yeast, should I put it in the cold water right away or would that get it too cold? It needs to be at 62*


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[rodwha]

Drop that sucker into the water tub once you've pitched your yeast.

Ales require warmer temps than lagers do, as well as less time overall to make. But the ale temps will depend on the yeast strain used. Most seem to thrive in the 60's.

 

[Superstorm]

Drop that sucker into the water tub once you've pitched your yeast.



Ales require warmer temps than lagers do, as well as less time overall to make. But the ale temps will depend on the yeast strain used. Most seem to thrive in the 60's.

Ok, maybe I'll just start it out in cold water and add the frozen bottles later since it will already be cool from pitching the yeast? I have a temperature strip for my carboy so I can monitor the temperature that way too.





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[rodwha]

I found that if my beer temp rose a bit it was hard to get it back down. I think it best to go ahead and drop frozen bottles in within 12 hours of pitching yeast so that the water is chilled nicely before fermentation begins.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

I found that if my beer temp rose a bit it was hard to get it back down. I think it best to go ahead and drop frozen bottles in within 12 hours of pitching yeast so that the water is chilled nicely before fermentation begins.

This, unless your dropping 3 big blocks of ice in your swamp cooler your not going to chill your wort down to the point you yeast drops out.

A few bottles wont make much difference in making it colder, it will however keep the swamp cooler water from moving to room temp, which will in turn bring your beer to room temperature + yeast heat.

Your never going to get exact repeatability using a swamp cooler, its just about keeping it colder than standard ambient 68-70F because it will put the beer at like 75F which is just too hot. Over time you'll get a sense for how many bottles you need to add when to keep it in a +-2F window or so around where you want.

 

[brewsitorloseit]

I've got a gallon of Brooklyn brewshop IPA fermenting at about 75-80 degrees and im thinking is that too hot? I'm already almost two weeks in and it was probably hotter than that a couple days too.
Its my first beer and I didn't realize how hot my basement actually is until now.
So have I ruined my beer? Or is there anything I can do to salvage it in the bottling stage?
What kind of effect is this hot fermentation going to have anyways?

 

[Newsman]

I've got a gallon of Brooklyn brewshop IPA fermenting at about 75-80 degrees and im thinking is that too hot? I'm already almost two weeks in and it was probably hotter than that a couple days too.
Its my first beer and I didn't realize how hot my basement actually is until now.
So have I ruined my beer? Or is there anything I can do to salvage it in the bottling stage?
What kind of effect is this hot fermentation going to have anyways?

No, you haven't "ruined" the beer. It'll still be beer, but you may likely have some "off flavors" that will make it not as good as it could have been. Not really anything you can do now. The critical temperature window is within the first 4-6 days, I've read.

 

[rodwha]

brewsit: That depends on whether or not 75-80* is the ambient temperature or the temp of the beer itself. I'm not sure at what point the yeast begins to create fusel alcohol, which is incurable and terrible, but I do know that I had done so before realizing that it was the beer's temp that needed regulating, and having allowed it to ferment on a table in my room with the A/C set at 75*, I created a bunch of fusel alcohol which gave me nasty hangovers after drinking just a few of them. I had to dump it.

After a week or so it's not so important to hold the temp so low, but prior to that the beer really needs to be held below room temp for most ale yeasts.