North Texas Newbie could use a hand...

Hey folks, great forums you've got here. Wife and I are seriously considering breaking into homebrew, but my main concern is the summer heat in the DFW metro area. The house stays between 75 and 80 degrees this time of year. Is that too hot for brewing/fermenting? We're still researching and such, so any advice would be much appreciated.

Thats a tad warm for most yeast strains. Simple solution though, very simple.... Swamp coolers. Search 'swamp cooler' on this site and you'll get some good info. Here in Mpls, I have no AC, room temp is 75* during the day, 70* at night, sometimes hotter and sometimes cooler, I use a swamp cooler that I rigged up myself with an 18 gal bucket, a fan, frozen water bottles and a t shirt. Keeps my fermentor at any temp I want with very little fuss or muss.
By the way, welcome aboard! You've found a great place to learn the addiction, I mean hobby, of brewing your own!

Swamp coolers don't work very well in the humidity here in TX. I converted a mini fridge and added a collar so I could ferment $10 gallons at a time. Find a cheap CL mini fridge and do it. Total cost was about $20 without the fridge or temp controller.

I'll second the swamp cooler. There *are* better options for controlling fermentation temperatures, but they cost money. A swamp cooler is basically (and you can search this for better descriptions and how-to's) a cooler filled with cold water and ice packs in which you put your fermenting bucket. You can also wrap your bucket with a wet towel or t-shirt and run a fan on it to help drop the temp.

I used a swamp cooler for my last brew when the garage got to be 80-90 degrees, and the cooler kept my brew at a good 64.

A couple things with this:

It's the cheapest way to go, but you do have to swap out the ice packs to keep the temp regulated. I just filled a dozen plastic water bottles and tossed them in the freezer, used two at a time in the cooler.

The temp difference caused a lot of condensation on my bucket, which seemed to screw with my adhesive thermometer. The thermometer continued to work though (just looked white on half of the temp "blocks"), so it worked out.

I keep the house at similar temperatures here in Keller -- maybe a little lower. I keep fermenters in a tub of water and swap out bottles of frozen water several times a day to keep it in the low 70s. If I put it under a ceiling fan or a desk fan I can usually keep it around 68-70.

It's tough without a fermentation chamber, like a converted mini fridge.

I usually ferment Belgians during the summer because they can be fermented in the 70s. Otherwise I do small batches (around 1 gallon) because it's easier to keep those cool than a five gallon fermenter.

I'm in Austin and suspect it's even hotter here than it is for you in DFW, but don't worry! With a little ingenuity you can brew great beer in the summer. 75-80 is not too hot to ferment, but the yeast will throw off some esters which will contribute to the flavor profile, which is not desirable in many beer styles. So you usually want to keep your fermenting beer at around 68 degrees F (which means the ambient temperature of the room it's in needs to be a couple of degrees cooler). But a swamp cooler will save you.

Here is some other advice for brewing in the Texas summer:
- Cooling full 5-gallon boils can be tough in the TX summer. Most cooling systems involve heat exchange between hot wort and tap water, and the tap water in TX is going to be too hot in the summer to get your wort down to pitching temperatures. You may need to look into a "pre-chiller" or consider doing partial boils of 2-3 gallons, which you can chill in a bath of ice water. If you start with extract, chances are you'll be starting with partial boils anyway, but just keep it in mind.
- When in doubt, brew what you can based on your environment. Estery flavors are actually desirable to a certain extent in others (like Belgians and hefeweizens). I typically brew a lot of wheat beers in the summer, because they taste quite good even fermented at temperatures slightly higher than the usual 68.

You guys rock with the quick responses, thanks a bunch. Did a quick search on the swamp cooler stuff, probably the easiest way for a couple of beginners. As far as Texas tap water, I use it to make coffee and thats about it - Ozarka and such will be in the brew. Which brings me to another question...we're planning to start with extract for the first batch or two to get the feel for it. Boil wise, would you recommend doing the full 5 gallons at once, or split it up? Not sure if it makes a difference

Taypo said:

You guys rock with the quick responses, thanks a bunch. Did a quick search on the swamp cooler stuff, probably the easiest way for a couple of beginners. As far as Texas tap water, I use it to make coffee and thats about it - Ozarka and such will be in the brew. Which brings me to another question...we're planning to start with extract for the first batch or two to get the feel for it. Boil wise, would you recommend doing the full 5 gallons at once, or split it up? Not sure if it makes a difference

Click to expand...

If you have the capabilities, full boils are best. However, if you're just starting out, I'm guessing you probably don't have a wort chiller? With a full 5 gallon boil, you'll have to chill it down to pitching temps rather quickly. Most use some kind of wort chiller to do this.

If you do a partial boil (which is absolutely fine with extract brews, and to be honest, I'm not really sure there *is* a benefit to doing full boils with extract...though I might be wrong), you can simply put the boil pot (with 2-3 gallons of hot wort) into an ice bath in your sink to chill it down. Also, adding the cold top-off water to get it up to 5 gallons chills it a bit too.

It makes a difference in your hop usage. I've only done partial boils so far and all three batches came out great. In fact, the last one i did tastes identical to the commercial version.

I'm interested in going to full boils only because i don't like the idea of hops being wasted. The only problem is that 100 degrees isn't friendly for a 60-90 minute boil on the operator, it's way to effin hot at that point that i wouldn't even enjoy the process.

Zixxer10R said:

It makes a difference in your hop usage. I've only done partial boils so far and all three batches came out great. In fact, the last one i did tastes identical to the commercial version.

I'm interested in going to full boils only because i don't like the idea of hops being wasted. The only problem is that 100 degrees isn't friendly for a 60-90 minute boil on the operator, it's way to effin hot at that point that i wouldn't even enjoy the process.

Click to expand...

Right! Hop utilization. I knew I was forgetting something. I was thinking mostly about mash efficiency with AG versus the already made extract.

EDIT: Just to give you a "for instance:"

Using an IBU calculator, you'll find that 1 ounce of 7% alpha acid hops would give you roughly 26 IBUs with a 6.5 gallon boil, while you'd only get 11 IBUs from that same ounce of hops with a 2 gallon boil. In other words, you'd need a little more than double the hops to get the same utilization. (The gravity of the wort makes a difference too).

As already state, chilling the wort is the main concern with a full boil. I've done many a partial boil on the stove top and they work fine. I usually try to start with about three gallons of water and end up with about 2 1/2 gallons of wort at the end of the boil. Hop utilization is an issue, but not really a deal breaker. I tend to add half my extract early and the other half in the last ten mintues. In essence, that's giving me a wort gravity during the bulk of the boil that would be consistent with a full five gallon boil. So, I don't worry about it.

Shooter said:

As already state, chilling the wort is the main concern with a full boil. I've done many a partial boil on the stove top and they work fine. I usually try to start with about three gallons of water and end up with about 2 1/2 gallons of wort at the end of the boil. Hop utilization is an issue, but not really a deal breaker. I tend to add half my extract early and the other half in the last ten mintues. In essence, that's giving me a wort gravity during the bulk of the boil that would be consistent with a full five gallon boil. So, I don't worry about it.

Click to expand...

+1 on that. That's how I avoid hop utilization issues when doing a partial boil (start w/4 1/2 gal, usually end up just under 4). Adding the bulk of the extract late really helps the hops do their job.

My stove won't boil 5 gallons in a reasonable amount of time, so I stick to 3 or so gallons.

I live in the Dallas area and I ended up getting a small cheap chest freezer and putting a temp controller on it and love it. Another good thing about it is if you get a yeast strain that really gives off a bad smell while fermenting it stays trapped inside the freezer and doesn't stink up your house. That makes the wife really happy.

+1 to the swamp cooler. Although i am dying to make a ferm chamber, right now I am using a big igloo cube ice cooler. You can put a 6.5 gallon carboy in there and then fill near the top with water. I use a combo of those ice packs used in shipping cold stuff and frozen 1L soda bottles filled with water to maintain my ferm temps.

There is no problem at all to maintain ale ferm temps and with some diligence (changing the ice packs before and after work) I can even keep it low enough for lagers.

I used the swamp cooler here in texas with good results. House temp is about 75. I just put my bucket in a bathtub we rarely use, put a shirt and point a fan at it as well as keep putting ice in it and I can ferment around 63-65

Another vote for a fermentation fridge. If you have the space, old piece of crap fridges pop up on cragslist from time to time. $0-$30 fridge + $16-$50 temp controller = temp control at all times.

You can pick up a line voltage thermostat (used for baseboard heaters and air conditioners) for pretty cheap at a hardware store in some areas - not sure if we can here.

@Jww - right across the toll bridge from ya.