Fermentation Temperature Woes

I just moved into a new house so I decided to run a little experiment in the basement (A.K.A. New Cellar). I put a gallon of water down there a few days ago and took the temperature today. The water was at 74 degrees. Not good.

I'd like to ferment anywhere between 60 and 70 degrees. So what's the technique here? Should I go with the party tub filled with water and a block of ice technique? Will that bring the temperature down a good 7 degrees at least?

Put the fermenter in a bucket of water, put a t-shirt on the fermenter like its wearing it. Run a normal fan on the fermenter. You should get 7 deg out of it. I was basically in the same boat and turned 75 to 67-68.

The shirt wicks the water and the fan cools the shirt.

ramthebuffs said:

Put the fermenter in a bucket of water, put a t-shirt on the fermenter like its wearing it. Run a normal fan on the fermenter. You should get 7 deg out of it. I was basically in the same boat and turned 75 to 67-68.

The shirt wicks the water and the fan cools the shirt.

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2nd on the above. Where I live, thermostats are usually set in the 78-80 range in the summer and most people don't have basements. I've done the tshirt trick in a bathtub with a small fountain pump pumping water around the top of the tshirt so that it flows down the sides. With a fan blowing on this setup, I can get temps down to the lower 60s.

In your case, since you only needs 5-10 degrees, you should be fine with just a tshirt and fan.

I built a fermentation chamber out of some leftover 1 3/4" pink foam and placed a utility tub inside of that. After placing my fermentation bucket into the tub I fill it with water and swap out frozen two liter bottles morning and night. Ambient air temp was 79-80 and the water temp stayed in the low 60's the entire time. Highest I measured was 65 after I missed a morning add of the two liter.

Bullbythehorns said:

I built a fermentation chamber out of some leftover 1 3/4" pink foam and placed a utility tub inside of that. After placing my fermentation bucket into the tub I fill it with water and swap out frozen two liter bottles morning and night. Ambient air temp was 79-80 and the water temp stayed in the low 60's the entire time. Highest I measured was 65 after I missed a morning add of the two liter.

Click to expand...

I may go with this method. I have plastic fermenters so I think it would be difficult to use the shirt technique.

Thanks.