Brewing in Warm weather?

OK fellow brewers, I need some help.

We currently live in Virginia and I have a nice big basement that for most of the year stays at a good temperature for ale fermentation. I have really been blessed with my current situation. But....

My family will soon be moving to Orlando Florida. Having done some house hunting already, it is clear that I will probably not have the ability to brew quite so easily, at least with regard to fermentation.

Do any of you have experience using refridgerators/temperature controlers as a means of fermentation? If so, will you kindly share with me some of your hard earned knowledge/advice.

I would really like to have a setup where I can simply let the beer ferment, i.e. no changing of water or adding more ice or damp towels to keep the temperature where it needs to be.

Thank for the help!

 

How hot do you plan on letting your house get?

I'm curious why this will be a problem. Can you find a dark clost or something to put it in? If you have central air, you should be able have parts of the house down to the low 70s which is fine for ale.

 

Get yourself a 10 cu. foot chest freezer and a Johnson Controller.

Here's mine and I can fit 3 carboys, 1 five gallon corny and 1 three gallon corny in it.

 

A chest freezer is an idea that I had not considered. I like it.

I am sure that the house will be cool enough for making some ales, but I want to have more control over the temperature. My current basement only varies 1-3 degrees over the course of the day. Not to mention with a chest freezer I could lager!

 

Yep. Works great. Just put some DampRid to help cut down on condensation.

1911Man? Are you a Springfield Fan?

 

I wish, I'm freezing my ass off in California. Go with a freezer and temperature controller works great!!!

 

Won't your house have central air? If so, I would assume the temperature would stay pretty constant during the course of a day.

Also, if your house is warmer than you would like, an inexpensive but effective solution is the wet t-shirt trick. Put a t-shirt over your carboy, put it in a tub of water and it will keep your beer several degrees cooler than the temp in the house.

 

http://home.elp.rr.com/brewbeer/chiller/chiller.PDF

cheeper then a chest freezeer, better then a wet t-shirt

LOVE mine

 

Pumbaa
- Thanks for the link. I gave it a quick look and not only does it look like it would work, but it's another project!

EdWort
- I am a fan of any 1911 that is reliable. In my case that is a Kimber Custom Target II and a Para Ordinance LTC. Both very reliable and fun to shoot! Nothing beats a cold beer in the middle of the summer after getting some range time. :rockin:

 

Depends on what's in the T-Shirt.

Chiller works great!

 

How warm is too warm to ferment? We have HOT summers here, and the house will not go below 80 degrees. Is that too warm to brew?

 

Definitely! Fermentation higher than 80ºF will give you a lot of off-flavors, most noticeably and unpleasantly fusel alcohols, which have a stronger taste and stronger burn than regular alcohol. 75ºF is really about as high as you want to get for fermentation, and mid 60s is preferred.

 

looks like I am going to have to do a couple more brews then before it warms up. How about for storage. Will the bottles be in danger if it's already been brewed?

 

I know a chest freezer is more efficient than an upright but it seems to me like an upright would be a whole lot easier to work with.

 

You generally wanna keep bottles around the same temps, although 75ºF is fine. 80ºF is probably still too hot. Not really certain what the results of storage at that temp would be, but my impression is that it probably wouldn't be good.

Yeah, it does seem like that would terrorize a back pretty badly. It does seem cool and obviously better at trapping the cold air, but really, how often would you be opening it?

 

Storing bottled beer at warm temps reduce the shelf life of the beer, even homebrew.

 

I second the foam fermentation cooler. Mine is much uglier than what was posted, but it easily drops the temp 20 degrees below ambient temperature. It would probably go lower, but I've never tried.

 

well, it looks like I am going to have to invest in a 2nd fridge at least. thanks for the info guys, you are always helpful!

 

Brooklyn Brew Shop's book talks about beers they brew above 80 degrees. Looks like the yeast you use is the kicker. Some like the higher temps (or, at least, don't mind them). They had success above 90 degrees, in fact. Not sure that 75 degrees is an absolute ceiling (to use an aviation term - sorry, I'm a pilot) for brewing temps. I'm guessing that the advice here is sound but, with the right brew recipe in the Florida summer (I live in Palm Coast), you can get by with a house near 80 degrees.

Plus, above 80 degrees, the house is just uncomfortable. Your legs stick to your sofa. Ugh...

 

Hope you like farmhouse ales.

 

Being down here in South Carolina, most of my brewing takes place over the summer when we keep our house around 76-78 F. I've let my beers ferment upwards of 82 F and they still taste good. My latest trick involves sitting my fermenters on some raised planks over a central air vent that blows out in the upper 50s when the AC's on. Doing that keeps the temp down around 72 F, which is the best I can do for now. I just don't worry about the temps too much, it is what it is, and I'm still making beer that I like.

 

Its too darn hot for me to brew these days. Upper 90's with high humidity as well. If there was a breeze it wouldn't be so bad, but there is nothing. I'm in the basement racking beer and sipping out of the keezer...

 

I brew in my kitchen, so I can brew year-round. AC has to work a bit harder on brew day, though, and the kitchen can get pretty warm as the boil progresses.

The biggest problem is the tap water temperature, though. These days I'm just cooling the wort to 80 degrees, pitching, and then letting the fermenter cool down more in the basement.

 

Until you get your temperature situation under control I highly suggest brewing with a Saison yeast...90 degrees is still fine. Good luck.

 

As others said, until you find a good system to maintain lower fermentation temps, have at the belgian yeasts! Make some lovely saisons too. Mmmm .... what a delicious dilemma you have!

 

Has anyone realized yet that this thread is from 2007?
Just sayin'

 

Yup. Did a search and found the subject. Considering that the art of brewing beer is hundreds of years old, I'm guessing that a 5-year-old thread is probably still relevant. Not exactly a high-tech and high-velocity field of study

 

I cant say IVe done this, but Where It up to me I wouldn't fiddle around with a chest freezer. Too hard ot load into and too hard to load out.

If I had access to a smaller room (larger than a closet, but still pretty small) Id just install a 2ed smaller cheaper AC unit to keep its temperature proper for ales.

Possibly add some extra insulation over the walls, move a bunch of your home brewing stuff into the room, and your set. Would probably be cheaper than keeping your ac on at 70 all the time for your entire house (which in Florida, is a hard temperature to get at, trust me, and will cost a bundle to keep your whole place at that temperature), and should work out just fine.

I heard of some monks in Hawaii for their brewery, and it worked out just fine for them. and their temperature is far higher than what you will be facing.

I'm pretty sure you can pick up a small AC unit that can get the job done from Home Depo for about 100$

 

I use a 7.1 cu. ft. freezer from Sam's Club Works great w/a Johnstons controller. Oh yea, I'm in Hawai`i, we are farther south, but it rarely gets over 95 in the sun at my house. In the shade under the house maybe 85 on a HOT day.

 

Brewing in New Orleans summers isn't so easy either. Brewed this past weekend. I use an immersion chiller to cool my wort, but it leveled out around 84*. Ground water is about 75*, but the ambient temp in the brew house (read: shed) goes around 90*+ (gotta keep the doors open to run the hose in and out, though the room is insulated and there's a window unit). I use a minifridge with a temp controller for fermentation, so I stuck the brew pot in there at a real low temp to bring it down another 10*.

Then, once cooled, siphoned into carboy and brought the fridge up to about 68* for fermentation. Works well. Maybe not the best method, but so far so good.