fermenting with no a/c

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hobbsj

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So the wife and I were really excited to move up north where we wouldn't need an a/c for the house. Well, summer hit and its hot and I brewed. Temp in the house is 80ish +. I used a WL london ale yeast but I'm worried about the room temp. Is there something I can do to keep the beer a bit cooler? I thought about a wet towel around the base of the fermenter for some evaporative cooling. Thoughts?

Thanks
 
Search for "swamp cooler", that's the most common/cheapest method. You could also pitch high-temp yeasts like various saison/french blends.
 
I just use a big bucket that I found at the grocery store...its normally used to hold ice and drinks at bbqs. Fill it up 1/3 the way with water and stick the carboy in there. Then have frozen bottles of water in the freezer and add them as needed. Easy and cheap.
 
I live in North Carolina and barely use my air conditioner. During the summer my house is usually about 85 degrees. My beer closet is maybe 5 degrees cooler, but I just keep on fermenting anyways. Sure, I probably get some wilder flavors from my yeast, but isn't that why I make ales anyway? I wouldn't make a lager at these temps, but I'm all about ales in the first place.
 
Or if you don't have a water-tight bucket like mrroberts mentioned you could improvise. Right now I'm using use a big plastic planter that has those drain holes at the bottom...but I just lined the whole thing with bubblewrap (cheap insulation), put a lawn/garden bag in it and filled that with water/ice/frozen water bottles/etc.
 
and I have two batches of ale going in the cellar... one plastic bucket in a large plastic tub and a 6.5 G carboy in an old galvanised metal wash tub I found in the barn. A couple of frozen soda bottles in each, changed every 12 hours or so keeps the water bath temp at around 60F.

Condensation is a *****, so be careful to protect your floors / carpets if fermenting upstairs in the living portion of the house
 

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