T-shirt/swamp cooler fermentsion question

I am thinking of trying to use the T-shirt method to control my fermentation temps. Does anyone ever have problems with water molding during the two or three weeks it's fermenting? I ask because I used a water bath with aquarium heaters to ferment a saison over the winter that took almost 3 months, and the water started growing stuff in it. Thanks.

You can always use a bit of bleach in the water to keep the bugs at bay. Use a fan to get a bit colder.

I ended up putting bleach in there to stop it from getting worse, and that worked. I should have done that from the beginning, but I didn't expect it to take that long to ferment out. That saison yeast can be finicky.

Any idea of what kind of temperature drop I could achieve with a T-shirt and fan combo? My house stays in the low 70s normally, dipping into the high 60s at night. I was planning on running the fan through my temp controller. I only need a few degrees really.

I dont really have an idea on that particular figure, but I would assume a 10 degree drop would be about right (what was that quote about assumptions?) In order to use a fan with a temp controller, the probe would need to be in the beer itself, because the fermenter wall will be cooler than the actual contents due to the evaporative cooling effect. Example: if you have one of those stick on temp gauges, and it reads 68 degrees with a wet shirt on it with a fan blowing on it, I would doubt the beer is at 68 degrees. Or not. Let me know if you find out

Joe_in_GA said:

Any idea of what kind of temperature drop I could achieve with a T-shirt and fan combo? My house stays in the low 70s normally, dipping into the high 60s at night. I was planning on running the fan through my temp controller. I only need a few degrees really.

Click to expand...

I just keep 2L bottles of water frozen and drop one or two in at a time. Makes a big difference. You can easily get into the range you want.