Impressed with bath tub method

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

riored4v

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
1,307
Reaction score
9
Location
Aurora
Starting to get warm here in Vegas so I'm trying to dial in a method of keeping fermenations temps under control (w/o having to buy any additional supplies) so I can continue to brew into summer.

1st day didnt have much activity so I was sitting at a nice 68*. 2nd day, things took off and reached around 75* so I wrapped with a towel and a put a big fan on it and managed to get it down to around 73*. For whatever reason, it got hotter the following morning.. up to 80*. Decided to now give the bath tub method a try, and damn, it works really good.. too good..lol Put it in the water and got it down to 68* again so all was well. But I guess overnight with the cooler temps it dropped way down to 64*... dammit. So this morning I took the water out of the tub to let it warm up again and hoping by the time I get home it'll be back up to around 68-70.

Keeping a stable temp has been one hell of a challenge.. starting to think I'm going to make a styrofoam lid for my cooler.

fwiw.. the temp range for the yeast is 63-76. The yeast were slow to take off so i'm hoping i didn't stall them with the cold temps or cause any off flavors from the high ferm temps.
 
I'm only on my 5th brew, so I'm not an expert by any means, but I put a couple of inches of water in the tub and a wet t-shirt over the buckets and then I add ice as needed (usually once every 16 hours). I have the luxury of being able to go home several times during the day to check the temps and add ice as needed. I can't say that there's ever been a huge spikes/drops in temps.

I haven't used the fan yet, but I'm sure I can drop the temps another couple of degrees (and my fan has a thermostat that'll turn off if it drops below a certain temp).
 
I was having the same problems with the temps going up and down too hot in the day and too cool at night.So I did the tee shirt and pan of water trick and was quite surprised at how well it keeps carboy between 63 and 66 degrees . I throw in a couple handfuls of ice a couple times a day.
 
During fermentation the temp will rise as fermentation creates energy and during the first few days when fermentation is at its strongest the temp will be the highest and as it slows down so does the temp go back down. With wine this stays a little more consistent as it takes longer for fermentation as its starting gravity is much higher typically and takes longer for it to slow down so you have a much bigger time span.
 
I'm down to 72 (from like 82) the last 24 hours or so with this method. And it was really freaking easy. My problem is I didn't realize 82 was a problem until I asked....almost 2 days later.

Whoops!

Hope this batch is OK (I LOVE beer, so almost may be good enough....), and at least I know this for next time.

I would like a method which is more compact than my bath tub, though. So I'm looking for smaller vessels or those carboy jacket things from morebeer for my next batch.

Later,
Dave
 
Back
Top