North Florida Brewing in Hot Weather

I want to brew now, but don't like the trouble (or have the time) to swap out ice bottles, etc in a swamp bucket. Is there a beer I can make in a bucket of water and forget it for a week?

Beers like saison are fine to ferment warm like that, but you're gonna be pretty limited in your choices of brews for summer in FL w/o some sort of temp control. Why not build a fermentation chamber with a temp controller that you can set and forget?

Money and space. Getting ready to make wine shortly, but would like to crank out a quick beer first.

Make a saison! They are great for the summer time and if you don't go too high with the gravity it should be ready before too long.

Well I dont know how practical it is for you depending on the size of batches you are brewing but why not just get a cooler and some ice packs. A good cooler should be fairly easy to control the temps for a few days. Thats what I have been doing in my house. usually one or two small ice packs will keep it pretty steady for an easy 12 hours. Guess it depends on how good a cooler and how hot it is where you are keeping it. Im only doing the two gallon mr beer fermenter so it fits in a cooler with plenty of room to spare and I barely pay attention to it and just got a 10 dollar digital fridge thermometer I stick in there.

You can bring it over.. I've got some extra room in my fridgerator...

Well, warmer temps like that are only ideal for Saison and perhaps Trappists. But if the style you're making isn't too delicate you could probably get away with keeping decent temperature control for just the first day or so of fermentation. That'll establish a good portion of the flavor profile.

I used to use a swamp cooler technique, you only have to swap a small frozen water bottle about 1, 1.5 times/day - not too bad.
Then I stepped up to the "son of fermentation chiller" (search online) awesome, and under $100 parts from homey Depot.
Then I went to CraigsList for an old fridge - $200-400.
I just did my first Saison, and even those jamil suggests keeping it at 68F for two days, then slowly increase temp to ~82. It is good. I love these beers.
Those Belgian farmers didn't bother with all that tho...just did what you're trying to do. Of course, they lived in Belgium, not Florida.

i'm a tally brewer myself, and i have no problem keeping temperatures in the 60s without using a swamp cooler.

-get a plastic container that can fit your fermenter
-put cool water in the container
-place fermenter in container
-place old t-shirt over the fermenter and let t-shirt droop into the water in the container
-place small electric fan near the fermenter so there's a constant wind source blowing on the t-shirt

this works really well for me. on extremely hot days, i'll place some ice cubes between the t-shirt and the fermenter.

brewski08 said:

i'm a tally brewer myself, and i have no problem keeping temperatures in the 60s without using a swamp cooler.

-get a plastic container that can fit your fermenter
-put cool water in the container
-place fermenter in container
-place old t-shirt over the fermenter and let t-shirt droop into the water in the container
-place small electric fan near the fermenter so there's a constant wind source blowing on the t-shirt

this works really well for me. on extremely hot days, i'll place some ice cubes between the t-shirt and the fermenter.

Click to expand...

I may be confused here, but this seems like instructions for building a swamp cooler to keep your fermenter cool without using a swamp cooler??? I'm lost!

Aye,
I thought a swamp cooler was placing your carboy in a vessel with water, draping a t-shirt over it, so it hangs in the water a few inches. Then:
- put a fan on it to increase evaporation (equals increase cooling
- or put a 16-20 oz frozen water bottle in it
- or both.

I always just stuck a temp probe in one corner, an ice bottle in the opposite corner, swapped it out 1-2 times/day (swap more when fermentation active, less as fermentation slows). Do whatever it takes to keep the yeast happy. Must...keep...yeast...happy...

i should have specified.

both are very similar in structure, but for the temperature controller i just described, you won't need to sub out frozen water bottles everyday. the fan and wet t-shirt keep the beer cool enough.

only on really, really hot days do i add ice chips to my water.

hope that clarifies things.

How big are the water bottles u are using? I use a big plastic tub that has room enough for the bucket and a frozen 1 gallon milk/water bottle. I swap them out 2x per day. This takes like 30 seconds per day. This in addition to a T-shirt and I can keep the temps to 66-72 with the A/C off during the day.

Brew hoppy APAs and IPAs (with american yeast strains), Belgians and even hefes (if you like bubblegum and banana). Just shy away from any thing near over 1.060 until the fall. Sasions you can do without the swap cooler. You want those to get up in temp to bring the funk.