Boise brewers, sound off!

Hi all! I'm currently living in Arizona but it looks like my wife's educational plans will have us moving to the Boise area relatively soon.

BIG QUESTION: I'm coming from some pretty serious heat: even in the winter, temps here are warm. So, up to this point, all my plans for fermentation temperature control involved aggressive cooling. NOW, given the move to a much cooler climate, I can see my needs are going to be shifting.

SO, how do you all do your brewing, specifically with regard to temperature control? Do you find brewing in your garage/basement keeps temperatures pretty much where you need them, or did you build a chamber? If so, is heating or cooling the more common need in Boise? I understand that it will depend on whether or not the chamber is in the house, garage, basement, or outdoors. Also, I'll mention that I'm generally an ale guy at the moment, so my targets are usually in the mid-60s. I'm just trying to adjust my thought processes. In reality, I guess I'm glad we found out we'd be moving before I busted my hump building a cooling-only chamber.

Thanks!

Ike

Hey welcome to Idaho.
I just started brewing around new years this year so my fist couple brews were done while it was crazy cold out. My house stays in the upper 60s during the winter so I found I still had to work to keep it a bit cool especially the first couple days when it's chugging away generating its own heat.
what I have is a big rubbermaid tote in my closet. I put the carboy in and fill it bout half way with water. Then I have a little submersible aquarium pump that I got on amazon for like six bucks that keeps the water moving. Then bout once or twice a day ill toss a frozen water bottle in. It gets hot as hell here in the summer so I may move that operation to the garage soon as it stays a little cool. im working on a tight budget so this is my ghetto cheap way of doing it.

dreaded_rust said:

what I have is a big rubbermaid tote in my closet. I put the carboy in and fill it bout half way with water. Then I have a little submersible aquarium pump that I got on amazon for like six bucks that keeps the water moving. Then bout once or twice a day ill toss a frozen water bottle in. It gets hot as hell here in the summer so I may move that operation to the garage soon as it stays a little cool. im working on a tight budget so this is my ghetto cheap way of doing it.

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That's what I've been doing here so far, but have really wanted to "kick it up a notch."

The budget is going to be tight, so given the more moderate temperatures I'm thinking I may start out with a Cool Brewing Bag for fermentation and save the spare fridge for a kegerator down the line.

Thanks!

In our house, we have a wash sink in our laundry room. It is deep enough that I can sit my 6.5 gal primary in there and fill it up with water and then my temps sit right at 68-70 deg. year round. For secondary, I place my carboys in my basement, which sits in the low 60s year round. If you have a similar sink, you might try that.