High temp / clean fermenting yeast

It remains a fairly constant 70 degrees in my basement where I ferment. I don't have the resources to do any sort of fridge build for temp control right now, so just trying to work with what I've got. I'm looking for ale yeasts that will still ferment cleanly (low esters/phenols) above 68 degrees. Thoughts?

US-05 should work fairly well, but you really should try to bring your temp down as much as you can- remember, fermentation is exothermic, so the temp inside your fermenter will be a bit higher than room temp. Try swamp cooling your fermenter.

Yea, you're just not going to be making clean beer at ambient 70F with any yeast. Your options are to just work with warm strains like belgians, or to invest minimal time and effort into cooling your beer. Here where the air is extremely dry, I can keep 5 gallons of beer at 60F by wrapping it in a wet towel and pointing a strong fan at it. That requires keeping the towel very wet at all times, so instead you can also go buy a muck bucket for less than the cost of a pack of liquid yeast and fill it with water, put your fermentor in that, and then keep tossing ice into it to maintain your ferm temps (or frozen water bottles- they're better because you don't have to mess with removing water from your bucket).

Temperature control is the single most important factor in making good beer.

daksin said:

Yea, you're just not going to be making clean beer at ambient 70F with any yeast. Your options are to just work with warm strains like belgians, or to invest minimal time and effort into cooling your beer. Here where the air is extremely dry, I can keep 5 gallons of beer at 60F by wrapping it in a wet towel and pointing a strong fan at it. That requires keeping the towel very wet at all times, so instead you can also go buy a muck bucket for less than the cost of a pack of liquid yeast and fill it with water, put your fermentor in that, and then keep tossing ice into it to maintain your ferm temps (or frozen water bottles- they're better because you don't have to mess with removing water from your bucket).

Temperature control is the single most important factor in making good beer.

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Yeah I already tried the towel thing but it didn't do anything. Perhaps it wasn't wet enough or my fan wasn't strong enough. Guess I'll look into the ice bucket thing for the next batch.

I have tried the rope handle swamp cooler before and temps were too up and down (although I didn't do the t-shirt + fan). I happen to have one of those igloo cube coolers in my basement and a 6 or 7 gallon fermentation vessel happens to fit right into it. I fill with water up to beer level and drop a frozen 2L soda bottle in every once in a while to keep temps down.

I've used a lab thermometer to measure the water, then sanitized and stuck down in the fermenting beer (through airlock hole) and the temperature in the middle of the fermentation column and the surrounding cooler water were the same, I did this several points during fermentation. My conclusion is the thermal mass of the cooler water and the insulation in the cooler are able to absorb the heat generated by fermentation and dissipate it, keeping fermentation at the same temp as the surrounding water. Typically, I start fermentation at 65 degrees and then let it go up to desired temp or bring down with ice bottles, but when the temps stabalize I usually get an increase of about a degree maybe two over a 8-10 hour period.

The last time I brewed I actually got the cooler temp down to 57 which leads me to the conclusion that I might be able to produce a lager using the cooler. My basement ambient recently has been 72.

I know im not going to be overly popular for saying this, but try coopers or mauribrew ale yeast. I have brewed with them in the summer here in thailand where ambient temps are 32c with good enough results
You could just hop the living crap out of it?