Fermenter temperature - 42 hours in

Blah. I'm having a lot of difficulty getting the fermenter below the ambient mid 70s temperature of my apartment.

I wrapped the big guy in a damp towel and blew a fan on it - this got it down to about 69. For a while. This worked today.

Overnight, much of the dampness evaporated. It's sitting at 73 again.

Do I need to sit it in a bucket to maximize the evaporative cooling effect?

I'm using Nottingham yeast and I'm deathly afraid of ending up with a beer full of esters. I wanted it to be clean.

Yes, sitting the fermenter in a shallow water bath would be beneficial. That would allow the towel to wick up water for a more continuous evaporation.

Getting a large rubbermaid tub, filling it with ice and cold water is a good way to go also. You can easily monitor the water temperature and use frozen bottles to cool it down. Yooper has a cooler with a hole cut out in the top for the neck of the carboy.

Not sure what style you brewed but I wouldn't be extremely worried about higher temps. Recently I read about Bell's and Unibroue fermenting in the mid 70's. Yeah, you might get some esters and depending on what style it is they could be unwanted. But it won't be terrible or undrinkable and if you are patient and let it condition for a little while it should be ok.

I have gotten my swamp cooler down to 57 degrees. And that was with a ton of frozen waterbottles.



The water bath was 57 degrees, but the temp strip on the big fermenter was a few degrees higher..

THe t-shirt acts as a wick, and the water bath continuously refreshes the wick.

First of all, thanks for all the feedback. Second of all, BLAH. It's not working.

Here's what I have: a cheap plastic bin from K-Mart filled with ice water. I've refilled it with ice water frequently (3 times a day). It is not working. The beer is around the ambient temperature of my apartment. It was 72-74 during heavy fermentation...now it's 75-76.



Am I doing this right?

Your bin is waaaayyyyyy too shallow for one thing.....ANd secondly, did you look at my picture? THe t-shirt has to go UP AND OVER the entire bucket to act as a wick...it has to wrap all the beer in cool water in order for it to work...Heat rises, so you want the cool to be up top as well......

Well, your thermometer strip is on the lid of the fermenter. You shouldn't have beer up there, so I bet you're getting ambient temperature on the thermometer.

Just to see if I'm right, could you open it up and sanitize a thermometer and get a temp of the beer? I have a deeper water bath (it's an Igloo cooler) and I fill it up with water and float a couple of frozen water bottles in there along with a floating thermometer. The beer inside the fermenter should be near the water temperature.

Ah, ****. Well, that makes sense. I'm not sure I have anything that fits the bucket, though.

As for the bin, there's nothing I can do for that tonight. I am just going to treat the next several days as a learning experiment.

How often do you change your frozen water bottles?

Also, your temp strip is probably not giving you beer temp being that you have it on the lid - where it is not in contact with beer! It needs to be on the side of the bucket, below the beerline. That's a cool name for a bar... Keep in mind that those temp strips do no like to get wet, they will become useless if they do (speaking from experience)

The kind of tub that you put a keg in can be had for less than 10 bucks. Look into it. I have one of those and also a smaller trash can that I can submerge the entire fermenter in up to the beerline. With that much water contact, the water temp is going to be pretty close to the beer temp. Go to a pet store and get a floating thermo for $4 and you're there. The water should be changed every once in a while or it gets funky, but with that big of a heat sink you will save your yeast from the temp swings over the course of the day, leading to better attenuation.

Annnnnd...

The internal temperature is 69. So the thermometer was sitting on top in the picture, but I was taking readings from the side. Maybe I was still capturing ambient temperatures from taking the temperature too high up?

I also slid a t-shirt over this guy. Where do you guys stick your thermometer to monitor temps?

Thank you for helping with my dumb**** questions!

Heck even dollar general has those big tubs these days.....and you'll find that if you use frozen water bottles rather than just ice cubes, they last longer....

rock salt (or any salt) can also be added to drive the temps down further.

My ferm strips are right at the midline of my buckets and carboys.

Mine doesn't seem to stick sometimes.

Believe it or not, I couldn't find something deep AND wide at K-Mart. But I'm going to pick one up soon. One of the crappiest parts of living without a car in Chicago is getting this stuff when your local store has poor inventory.

The salt is added to the pool of water?

Revvy said:

Heat rises, so you want the cool to be up top as well......

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I can't stress this enough too.

I first started brewing last august, ambient temp in my apartment got up to 80 during the day while I was at work. I hadn't found this place yet and all the advice here w/ swamp cooler tactics, so what I did was put it in a small closet and surround it with towels. I'd put tons of frozen water bottles in the towels and it would do absolutely nothing.

The next thing I did to add to the frozen water bottles was to put a cake pan with 2 ice trays of ice on top of the bucket, under the towels. This change alone allowed me to drop my temperature of my 3rd batch from 75 degree apt temperature to 62 degrees. The cold is on top and wants to sink, and the cake pan conducts the heat (or lack thereof) very well. now what I do is basically what everybody else does, putting it in a bin full of cold water, but then I put the cake pan full of ice and put it on top of the bucket, and cover that in towels to wick the water from below. Change out ice and water twice daily adn I think I'll probably be able to manage without any problems.

Also, I don't allow the towels to dip into the cake pan-- you want the cake pan to stay full of ice/icewater.


Also, I use bottles of liquor kept in my freezer along with the frozen water bottles... just saves on having water bottles lying around.

Take a look a my gallery for what I do in this situation. I couldn't get the pic to post correctly because I'm still getting used to Explorer 8. With the thick beach towels I can keep it about 10 degrees below the house temp and that's without frozen bottles of water. As others have said, adding those drops it that much more.

You guys are awesome. Thanks.

How many bottles do you use?

Here's mine:


You can't see it, but it's about 3/4 full of water with two frozen water bottles and a floating thermometer in the water. (The water and the beer will be roughly the same temperature if close to equal in volume).

Frozen bottles, that is!

That is an awesome setup!

kyleobie said:

Frozen bottles, that is!

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I don't think there's a "magic number". I just freeze up a bunch of bottles...this timy half pint ones, 12 ouncers, 2 liters, seltzer bottles, whatever I can find....and just add a bunch, then swap them with more after a few days....

Good deal. Thanks.

kyleobie said:

Annnnnd...
I also slid a t-shirt over this guy. Where do you guys stick your thermometer to monitor temps?

Thank you for helping with my dumb**** questions!

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I'm kinda lazy and dont really bother checking because there aint really much I can do about it. yea I can try to lower the temp if i wanted too, but it would just be a crap shoot as to what it would be.
So when its cool or cold I use nottingham , when it starts getting warmer (70+) I use safale 04. thats about as technical as i care to get.

That's also good to know. My next batch will DEFINITELY be a yeast strain I feel comfortable with in the mid 70s.

kyleobie said:

That's also good to know. My next batch will DEFINITELY be a yeast strain I feel comfortable with in the mid 70s.

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I don't know of many (if any) yeast strains that do really well in the mid 70s. You can make beer with just about any of them, but most of them are best no higher than 70 degrees. I like to ferment my ales at 62 or so. It gives a much better flavor to the finished beer, unless it's a beer that can benefit from banana/bubble gum fruitiness. Some English ales are good with a little bit of esters, but that's the yeast strain, not high fermentation temperatures. And remember, we're talking about the beer temperature, not the room temperature.

It's hard, but temperature control along with pitching the correct amount of yeast is the single best thing you can do to make good beer. Not recipe design, not different hops, not even water. Controlling the fermentation temperature will mean the difference between a beer that gives you headaches and hangovers (fusel alcohols) and a beer that is fantastic. Same recipe, same yeast, etc, but different temperature fermentations. That's why I'm always quick to mention that as an important key to good brewing.

Well, that makes sense, although I keep reading that some yeast strains can go as high as 75? Does that mean they will still produce esters?

I agree with Yooper, temp control is the first variable a beginner should tackle.

The more yeast you pitch, the more capacity your cooling system needs.

Water chemistry can wait, get your fermenter temps down for better beer.

kyleobie said:

Well, that makes sense, although I keep reading that some yeast strains can go as high as 75? Does that mean they will still produce esters?

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I've found that Cooper's Ale yeast is pretty forgiving. I had it up to 85F before. I wont say that it didn't produce any esters, but the beers came out good and I didn't get anything like a strong bubble gum flavor or anything like that. I'm not saying that I'd recommend fermenting it at 85F. I'm just saying it's hard to ruin a beer with that yeast.
What kind of beer are you going for? Some fruity esters can really add to a beer. It's got to be subtle though.

It's hard to match taste preferences on a forum. I guess I'm asking if your worried about subtle flavors (hints of fruit), or the knock your socks off and dump it down the drain flavors. If it's the latter, I think you'll be quite pleased with Cooper's. If it's the former, then I not really sure how to evaluate your taste preferences. If you want no esters, do a lager and figure out how to keep your temperature down.

But at the end of the day, if you can't control your temperature, you be better with the more forgiving yeast every time.

If you are going to use the strip thermometer, mount it horizontally on the side of the bucket, low enough that it is well below the level the beer will be at in the bucket, but high enough to keep it out of the water in the bin. Most fermometers don't like being submerged and it can ruin them. I put a strip of clear shipping tape over my fermometer to keep it dry when I am cleaning my carboys, and in case they get wet when sitting in a water bath.

kyleobie said:

Well, that makes sense, although I keep reading that some yeast strains can go as high as 75? Does that mean they will still produce esters?

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Yes. To avoid any fruitiness, ferment on the cold end.

Also remember if your yeast says 60-72, and you put it in a 60 degree environment, fermentation will bring up the temperature to like 63-65 degrees. So a 60-72 yeast really has a maximum temperature of, say, 66 and a minimum of something like 55 (once fermentation is started). One of the cleanest beers used pacman yeast at damn near 50 degrees, because the actual fermentation temp was probably around 55.

kyleobie said:

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Kyleobie, is that chicken broth in your swamp cooler!!

I don't think chicken broth is recommended.

I thought it was a juice box...but I think you're right....

He's making a modern version of Cock Ale.

It is. I ran out of ice so I thought a frozen box of chicken broth would help (it didn't)

There's no chicken broth in the water though

kyleobie said:

It is. I ran out of ice so I thought a frozen box of chicken broth would help (it didn't)

There's no chicken broth in the water though

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Well, I'm an optimist, so I have to point out that this will be so much easier for you in the fall and winter!

Of course, I have to use an aquarium heater in a water bath then, to get my fermenter over 60 degrees. But we'll deal with that problem in January!

Now, I'm not saying that this beer is going to be a banana bomb- we're just telling you that you may pick up some fruity flavors and something not exactly "right". It's still going to be good! What yeast are you using? I don't know if I ever saw that in ths post!

It might be fun to try this beer again in the winter, and see the differences you can pick out just from temperature differences.

Thanks - this is also a huge trial and error problem for me. I didn't have the equipment to do this before brew day and now I've made it a big pain in the ass for myself! I'll figure out a way to do this sooner or later.

I'm using Nottingham yeast.

kyleobie said:

First of all, thanks for all the feedback. Second of all, BLAH. It's not working.

Here's what I have: a cheap plastic bin from K-Mart filled with ice water. I've refilled it with ice water frequently (3 times a day). It is not working. The beer is around the ambient temperature of my apartment. It was 72-74 during heavy fermentation...now it's 75-76.

Am I doing this right?

Click to expand...

It also looks like you need to do some laundry...

Hm, these are all great ideas. I wish I would have known about them before I did my brewing. My first batch has been in the fermeter since the 16th. The temp is at a steady 72*-74*. Is this too high for an amber ale with Wyeast Northwest liquid yeast? Would it do any good this late into fermenting for me to put it a cool water bath?

YooperBrew said:

Here's mine:

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What size carboys is that in there?

sayteller said:

Hm, these are all great ideas. I wish I would have known about them before I did my brewing. My first batch has been in the fermeter since the 16th. The temp is at a steady 72*-74*. Is this too high for an amber ale with Wyeast Northwest liquid yeast? Would it do any good this late into fermenting for me to put it a cool water bath?

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Northwest does ok at 72 degrees- I've actually tried to get my fermentations up to that area when I've used it. You should be fine regardless. The most important time for temperature control is at the beginning, during active fermentation. That's when weird flavors can be produced from stressed yeast and/or high fermentation temperatures. It should be fine!

eelpout said:

What size carboys is that in there?

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That one is a 5 gallon carboy. I cut the hole out of layers of foam so I can actually do lagers in it in the winter. You can make the hole a bit bigger for a 6.5 gallon carboy.

Here's another swamp cooler idea from one of our members....just imagine it filled 3/4's of the way up with water and ice bottles.



Another thing people do is brew "seasonally" there are certain beers that can be brewed in the warmer weather, where you want some of the characteristics that come from slightly stressed warm weather yeast....I'm brewing a Belgian saison this weekend where I want the beer to ferment in the 80's....

I have storage in my apartment complex that is pretty chilly (high 30's-low 40;s) in the winter, so I started brewing lagers in the winter, regular ales in the spring without temp control where the ambient temps in my loft are in the 60s, I'm going to brew more heat tolerant ales through this period (and some others with my swamp cooler.)

SO you might want to consider something like that.