Poor man's lagerator

I'm currently fermenting a California common and am using the poor man's lagerator: a tub of water on the basement floor that the fermenter sits in.

In this case I only need to maintain a temp a few degrees below the ambient temp, so a small ziplock bag of water frozen solid added once or twice per day works beautifully.

The trick with this method is to know what size ice block you need to achieve the amount of cooling required. A gallon milk jug added morning and evening will keep the water bath significantly below ambient temp: maybe 10-15 degrees.

The water bath helps even out the temp changes so it's quite steady.

I may try doing something like that, I'd love to try a lager after my porter; I'll have a good number of bigger beers cellared, it would be nice to have something more on the clean/refreshing side. I built a ton of really study floor-to-ceiling shelving in my basement last summer, three or four feet deep, including one that's right next to the utility sink. I could set up up the water/ice bath on that and simply siphon the excess water out of the tub and down the drain, both as it warms up and at the end. I was planning on waiting until winter do lager, but I don't see any reason now why I can't do this relatively soon.

If you use ice in ziplock bags, plastic jugs, whatever...then you're not adding any volume to the water, which saves having to empty it. You are giving up a little chilling efficiency that way, I'm sure.

I wouldn't ferment this way regularly, as it's not a really big PITA, but enough of a PITA that I wouldn't want to be doing it all the time. But I do mostly ales and can usually find a place in the house that's the right temp with no further regulation required, and don't do enough lagers to justify the expense of a fridge + temp controller.

There's an old fridge here at the office that belongs to one of the reps, but that hasn't been used since we moved a few years back. I'm sure I could take it off his hands for $20 (he'd probably give it to me if I asked), but my problem is that the basement does not have much in the way of electrical outlets. I need to hire someone to come in and install some outlets and such, but I just haven't done so yet and would rather spend my money on other, more-pressing projects. So, I;m afraid that adding a fridge would be too much for the circuit that I do have, given that it also has things like table saws and whatnot hooked up to it.

Thus, the water-bath has a lot of appeal, boosted by the fact I - not by design - happen to have an ideal location. And, dropping a frozen milk jug in once or twice a day isn't that big a deal, I'll be headed into the basement anyway to sniff the airlock!