Temperature control in small apartment

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.

403Brewer

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 14, 2013
Messages
107
Reaction score
16
Location
Calgary
So I'm about 10 batches into my home brewing life, doing All Grain now and its come out well 9/10 times but I'm fermenting at too high of a temperature so I'm sure it could be better. Issue is I live in a 1 bdrm apartment so I don't have a cellar or space for another fridge. Are there any thoughts on how to keep temps down on a carboy w/o buying a fridge or maintaining a non-stop ice bath for a few weeks? It's pretty hard to drop the temps in my apartment below 25 deg C (77 F). Thanks for the input!
 
Search HBT for "swamp cooler" and "frozen water bottles".

If you have room for a dorm fridge, some of them can be modded to fit a single fermenter bucket and outfitted with an STC-1000.
 
Bucket of cold water that your fermenter sits in. You swap out frozen water bottles twice a day. But you DON'T do it for weeks. First few days are the most important. After 3-4, it shouldn't matter nearly as much.

Otherwise (and this is somewhat climate-dependent) you could drape a cotton towel or t-shirt over the fermenter to wick up water from the water bath. A fan increases the rate of evaporation. Evaporation causes cooling. Works best where it is low humidity.
 
Another tidbit on swamp coolers, use the sanitized water you were using on brew day as your swamp cooler water. Helps keep the nasties from growing in the bucket.
:D
 
Use the t-shirt trick. Find a bucket that your carboy will fit in plus a couple inches around. A bucket that comes up about half way is ideal as that helps with evaporation.

Put your carboy in the bucket and fill the bucket with water to around 3/4 full. Soak at t-shirt in water and slightly wring it out. The t-shirt should be wet but not dripping. Drape the t-shirt over the carboy.

If you can, place it where there is some air circulation (in a bathroom with the bath fan on or in any room with a ceiling fan or small fan to circulate air).

I've dropped the temperature of my fermenter 10-12*F below the ambient temperature in my place. But this is dependent on your relative humidity (humidity here is usually around 30-40%). The more humid it is the less effective the t-shirt trick is. Moving air through the room (an open window with a fan to draw air out) helps with high humidity environments.

cidertshirttrick_zps2a71176d.jpg
 
Back
Top