Brewing in a small Apt

Hey everyone

I'm looking for people that have similar living situations. I live in NYC and have a relatively small apt. I'm looking to do an extract as I'm a complete newbie.
My worry is that my apt is extremely warm, probably 75-77 during the summer without AC. I'm afraid that the temperature would be too warm for the fermentation. In your experience what beer do you think I should make for a warmer fermentation?

Thanks everyone

Saison.

Have you thought about using a swamp cooler?

Basically get a plastic tub or bucket that your carboy/pail will fit in, fill it with as much water as possible. Then collect, fill and freeze some plastic bottles (soda bottles, water bottles, 2 liter's, cleaned out milk jugs). Use a thermometer to moniter the temp of the water in the bucket, and then change out frozen bottles to adjust.

There's always the Sainson's and I saw in this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/brewing-light-beer-bit-too-hot-ok-183904/index2.html talk of using Cooper's Ale yeast as it has a higher temp range.

+1 on both comments above

Temperature is a real concern, but don't let it dissuade you from getting started. There are two general ways of dealing with this concern:

The first ways is the one you asked about. Brew bees that do well in warm weather. Belgian styles in general do very well in warm weather. As Dr. Dirt Saisons are one, but dubbels, trippels, dark strongs - anything that uses those Belgian high gravity yeasts will love living in your apartment

The other way is to find a low cost easy way to knock the temperature down in your carboy (or bucket). The swamp cooler idea mentioned by peanasky is what I've been doing in my apartment in Brooklyn and it works. For most ale yeasts you only need to get the temp down to the mid sixties and you really only have to worry about the fermentation temperature for the first two to three days after that it's not such a big deal and even if you had perfect control you'd want to give the temperature boost towards the end.

It seems like the concern isn't the size of your apartment but just the temperature.

The swamp cooler idea is a good one. My first batches were stored in my bathroom as it was always cooler in there. Even when my main room (685 sq ft condo) was 80 degrees the beer would be 68 in the bathroom. Plus if it DID get really hot my bathtub was there to give it a quick cool down.

Yeah Thanks for all the input. I'm going to Broolyn Home-Brew to pick everything up tomorrow. Has anyone been there?

I feel like the Essential Kit there is pretty well priced. Hey chrispykid - have you been brewing for a long time ? Have you progressed towards doing all grain yet?

Brooklyn Homebrew is great - they'll do right by you. I haven't priced out starter kits from other vendors to comment on the value, but the essential kit has the gear you need. I can't even tell you how great it is to finally have a local shop to buy ingredients from. Online shops are great, but they're not much help when it's Thursday and you find out that your Saturday afternoon plans fell through and you can brew beer. The shipping lag times are just killer.

I've been brewing for several years now, but was just doing a beer every year or so with a friend for the first 3 years or so. About 2 years ago I started brewing a lot more frequently (a couple times a month) and I've been doing all-grain for about a year (still on the stovetop).

My process is documented in this article a friend and I wrote for Popular Mechanics: http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/how-to-plans/4324487

Have fun with your first batch. Pay attention to your cleaning and sanitizing, but don't stress yourself out too much and pitch a healthy quantity of yeast. Either pitch two packets or make yourself a starter a day in advance (you can search this site for instructions - www.mrmalty.com has great info on starters too). Everything else is easy and you'll make great beer

I live in a co-op, and it's been getting very hot lately as well. I just brewed a partial mash APA, and put the fermenter in a plastic tub filled with water and ice, along with a t-shirt over the fermenter that was touching the water in the tub. I racked to the secondary on Monday night and the gravity reading seemed to taste pretty good, so I think it worked.

I think I'm going to brew a "summer saison" next. I really want a brown ale or mild, but my place has been unbearably hot this past week.

Thank you for everyone's advice. I ended up getting a Belgian Saison as recommended.
I did a few things wrong yesterday - maybe you guys can give me some insight.

1. I boiled off 4 gallons of water for steeping. This was probably too much water.
2. I sparged for only a few minutes and I let the water get too hot. I hope it didn't make my mash more tannic and bitter.
3. For some reason I totally forgot to pick up some Irish moss.
4. How do you sanitize your fermenter? I literally put in an ounce of Star-San and filled it with water. This created a mess - there was a huge amount of foam and bubbles. I had to just keep filling it with water to push the foam out. I've seen videos of other brewers just rinsing it quickly and shake it around - is this preferred?
5. I had trouble getting the bung into the fermenter opening. It kept sliding out - despite drying the lip of the bottle and the bung with clean paper towels. When I finally got it to stay - I inserted the airlock. Today I realized I should have used a blowoff hose for a few days before going to the airlock. The bung is also partially out of the bottle and not all the way in. I'm going to attempt to push it back in tonight.

To cool this I made a swamp cooler like suggested. I put the fermenter in the bucket and filled it up with star-san water and bottles of ice. Wrapped a tshirt around it. I hope I don't go home today to find a huge mess because I should have used the blowoff hose.

thanks! BTW I had a lot of fun. It was frustrating but awesome at the same time.

These discussions have good info

This one went one for quite awhile; https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/apartment-brewing-possible-138658/

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/anyone-else-brewing-out-apartment-my-story-115106/

There's some good resources in those.

And this, This was recently featured in BYO magazine...From one of our own members here.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/countertop-brutus-20-a-131411/