Need ideas on maintaining ferment temps

I brew at my shop, not at home and I need to find a way to keep my fermenters at a steady 65-70 degrees. I am new to this and before the outside temps rose too much i was able to keep my fermenter in the cellar. Now it is too warm in the cellar due to a family members deep freezer giving off heat. I have an extra fridge but they are not great at maintianing the required temperatures. Can someone give me some good ideas please?

My neighbor keeps his fermenters in a huge rubbermaid tub of water adding frozen pet bottles as needed to maintain his desired 70-ish temp. Personally I just keep mine underneath the air conditioner. my old window unit used to maintain my fermenters between 69-72. it gave out and now I have one of those 12,000 btu stand-alone a/c units that keeps my batches within +/- 1 degree of 69...

I havn't thought of that. hmm. What did you have to give for that a/c unit?

Well I live in an apartment that faces the afternoon sun, so ambient temps without an a/c are not liveable for yeast or myself. I got a 5000 btu window unit for the corner of my living room for $20 on craigslist and ran that thing 24-7 until it gave out 4 months later. when it gave out I had two fermeters going so I set out that afternoon and found my 12000 btu stand alone unit also on craigslist for $125. normally a five hundred dollar plus unit according to amazon. If your equipment is near a window in your shop, I'd say try to source a cheapish window unit from somewhere like craigslist. It works pretty well...

I would do that but the building is way too large to make cooling the whole thing feasable. Not sure if it matters, but your humidity level in so cal is nothing compared to ours in southern Indiana(90+%). I may have to partition off a section and use a window unit like you were saying. how long have you been a homebrewer? I wish you could mail me some Alesmith brews-we can't get them here.

I am currently trying the Rubbermaid tub with ice bottles every 8-10 hours. I have also used a chest freezer with a temp controller. I don't know how well the Rubbermaid tub will work but it get's great reviews on this site. A chest freezer can be bought on Craigslsit for around $100 and you can buy a temp controller for $50. The chest freezer was VERY accurate and it was stored outside in my garage that got up to 100+ in the summer. With the chest freezer, you just forget about it for a few weeks.

YOu'd be much better off with a big cooler than a rubbermaid tub.

I have a full size fridge that i no longer use. I think that would be my best bet, drawback being that i can only store one carboy. I'm gonna have to get a controller/thermostat. does the t-stat work by plugging the fridge into the tstat then that into the wall with a thermocouple inside the fridge?

oldschool said:

I would do that but the building is way too large to make cooling the whole thing feasable. Not sure if it matters, but your humidity level in so cal is nothing compared to ours in southern Indiana(90+%). I may have to partition off a section and use a window unit like you were saying. how long have you been a homebrewer? I wish you could mail me some Alesmith brews-we can't get them here.

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the humidity would make the a/c a bad plan. I've actually been curious how the thermostat controllers work as well. what's the reason you brew in your shop and not at home? I have been brewing for almost a year and a half.