Tropical Brewing

Bula Everybody, I am writing from Fiji and just getting started, my wife bought me some basic homebrew equipment so I'd stop complaining about how bad Fiji Bitter is. My main challenge here is going to be temperature control. The weather is very humid with a low of 25c and a high of 30c. Even in "winter" the range is 22-27c.

I am looking for a cost effective way to keep fermentation temperatures down. The tee shirt method is not the most effective because of the humidity. Basic hardware and plastic materials are expensive and the electricity is too much for blasting the AC all day or using a drinks fridge.

I am thinking of constructing a styrofoam box for my fermentation vessel and jamming lots of ice packs in there which I'll change regularly. ALso I'll initially cool my wort with frozen water bottles.

Anybody have some thoughts on that? Vinaka

Get a rubbermaid or other type of bin. Place your carboy/bucket in there and fill the bin with water, place some frozen 2L bottles in there and keep an eye on it. I did that for a good 5 batches before I got a fridge and could keep the temp in a 60-70 range with a few bottleswaps a day.

iijakii said:

Get a rubbermaid or other type of bin. Place your carboy/bucket in there and fill the bin with water, place some frozen 2L bottles in there and keep an eye on it. I did that for a good 5 batches before I got a fridge and could keep the temp in a 60-70 range with a few bottleswaps a day.

Click to expand...

+1 for bin or wash tub with water and frozen bottles.

And I suppose you could insulate the whole thing with the styrofoam to keep it colder a little longer.

Consider buying a Cool Brew bag. It worked great for me. See: http://www.homebrewing.org/product....ium=shopping&gclid=CIy0pPmDqMoCFYaCfgodkwABjw

Alternatively, Brew Saisons. They don't need no stinkin' temperature control.

Yeah, but they're gross.

iijakii said:

Get a rubbermaid or other type of bin. Place your carboy/bucket in there and fill the bin with water, place some frozen 2L bottles in there and keep an eye on it. I did that for a good 5 batches before I got a fridge and could keep the temp in a 60-70 range with a few bottleswaps a day.

Click to expand...

I live on the Big Island of Hawaii on the rainy side. This is what I do and it works great, although I use a 1 gallon jug in an open cooler for 2 five gallon batches. While not as precise or as controlled as a dedicated fermentation chamber/fridge, I'm several 10 gallon brews in now without any fermentation issues since I started doing this.

For chilling your wort, I'd suggest two coil immersion chillers, one as the chiller, and the other inline as a pre-chiller. Just put the pre-chiller in a bucket of ice water. It gets my catchment tank water temps down quickly. I'd be worried about putting plastic bottles with frozen water in them in my wort.

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks I appreciate it. Will let you know how I go

There is a Norwegian or Scandinavian farmhouse yeast, think it's from omega or east coast yeast, can't recall. Called hothouse or hothead, something like that. Anyways, I had that sucker at 85f and it came out pretty clean. Little bit of fruity esters, no spicy or peppery phenol stuff like a saison. Maybe it can be your house strain.

Too bad about the cost of electricity. I lived in Singapore and used an air-conditioned, very small room for my fermentation, AND the carboy sat in a 100L tub of water that I first got to my fermentation temp, then maintained with the AC.

Sounds like the bucket+ice is the best way for you.

This worked very well thanks!

Sorry to raise a dead thread ...

Tell us about the results you got. I have a similar temp control problem and was looking into the hothead yeast as a cure for that.

What was the beer like?