Water bath for bucket

Hey y'all, Anybody ever submerge an ale pail with a spigot into a water bath? I'm brewing edworts Oktoberfest and I want to ferment around 60f; no chance of that in good ole Raleigh, NC in the closet. Help!!!

Well I haven't heard anything about it but I never tried because it scares the crap out of me! SWMBO and I only use buckets as they have never been a problem that required us to get glass.

I'm sure you've seen the swamp-cooler style ferm chambers that are just rubbermaid buckets with water and frozen water bottles and the carboy is wrapped in a t-shirt that acts as a wick. Well, I figured it would never work for buckets. So, here are two solutions:

1) Get a big tray or bucket that will fit your ale pail and decent amount of drippy water. Then get two buckets (but really, only one is needed) that will hold a couple gallons of water and frozen water bottles. Then, take a long amount of fabric (i.e. oversized beach towel, FTW!) and wrap the bucket, but in a way that you can dip either end of the fabric in a bucket. The cold water will trail up the wrapped fabric and keep your bucket cool. Add fan if you need it cooler

2) Brew with the seasons! Be in touch with nature, and junk. When it gets real hot you can brew only Belgian styles and wheats, which do better in the warm temperatures. Then, in the winter, you can put your bucket in the garage and lager with the natural coldness of the concrete floor.

Hope that helps!

I am doing it right now. I put water in a large basin with starsan in it. I placed the fermenter in the bath, wrapped a towel around the bucket and put ice bottles in the bath. I have a small fan pointed at it to increase evaporation. I figure the bucket should stablilize near the temp of the bath. So far, I have been able to keep the bath between 60 and 70. I replace the ice bottles every few hours during the day. At night I put an extra large chuck of ice from an 1 gal ice cream bucket in the bath. I hope this does the trick. I am brewing a wheat so it will be a bit more temp forgiving.

nothreat said:

I am doing it right now. I put water in a large basin with starsan in it. I placed the fermenter in the bath, wrapped a towel around the bucket and put ice bottles in the bath. I have a small fan pointed at it to increase evaporation. I figure the bucket should stablilize near the temp of the bath. So far, I have been able to keep the bath between 60 and 70. I replace the ice bottles every few hours during the day. At night I put an extra large chuck of ice from an 1 gal ice cream bucket in the bath. I hope this does the trick. I am brewing a wheat so it will be a bit more temp forgiving.

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Is the spigot submerged? Because that's the issue here

I warp the spigot in a freezer bag and wrap it with a rubber band.

It's kept the spigot dry for all the batches thus far.

I guess I could buy buckets w/out spigot holes. They would be fine to submerge, right?

Submerging a spigot is perhaps a bit risky...but if I were to do it, I would just be sure that the bath is clean...star san, or a few tsp of bleach to keep things in check...prior to draining the pail...I would sanitize the spigot as well.

wilserbrewer said:

Submerging a spigot is perhaps a bit risky...but if I were to do it, I would just be sure that the bath is clean...star san, or a few tsp of bleach to keep things in check...prior to draining the pail...I would sanitize the spigot as well.

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I don't know, pressure should be at equilibrium; bath to wort and wort to bath should be almost equal. How bout iodophor? thats all I got.