Summer Brewing in the Deep South

So I brewed for the last time about 3 weeks ago, but since then the heat down here in New Orleans has gone pretty close to full summer on me, and the ground water is already pretty warm. I have not brewed in the summer yet, and I do all grain outdoors with 10 gal pot with spigot and a copper immersion chiller. I guess the one pro is that the mash temps should be easy to keep on target. The cons are a better atmosphere for nasties to thrive in and cooling wort below 80 (and especially below 70) seems damn near impossible. Does anyone have any experience, tips, and/or horror/success stories of brewing in these conditions? thanks!

 

I live just outside of Phoenix and it is already around 110f out here right now. What I do without any problems yet is cool to 100f as fast as possible, then put in my sanitized Ale Pail and into a swamp cooler or fermentation chamber and let cool to pitching/fermenting temps. I have even gone out as far as 24 hours before pitching with this method without any problems.

 

Just roll with it. You can chill the wort by either bringing it down to 90ish degrees and letting it finish cooling in your fermentation fridge/freezer, or switching to recirculating ice water through the chiller using a pond pump.

Bugs aren't really a bad problem. Just cover the pot once you are getting close to pasteurization temperature if you are concerned.

Getting up early in the morning helps with comfort, as does heating up mash/sparge water inside on the stove instead of outside on the burner. Another option are split evening/morning brew days to take advantage of the cooler hours.

 

A pump to recirc ice water though the chiller or get a second coil as a pre-chiller and run it inline to your tap water. Set the pre-chiller coil in an ice bath. The pump and recirc ice water option is cheaper though.

 

I use my old copper chiller as a pre-chiller, I run the water through it in a bucket of ice and cold packs and then use a CF chiller. It also helps if you get a big tub that you can fit your carboys in and pack ice around them when you are filling them.

 

+1

I've since devised a secondary chiller coil, but until recently I simply used an extra 50' of water hose loosely rolled up in the bottom of a trash can with 40lb of cube ice and a couple 1 gal frozen jugs. Don't hook up your "chilled" line until the temp starts to plateau (usually about 20deg ish over tap water temp cooling will begin slowing down dramatically).

BTW - The good news is that the cheaper the hose the better (thinner transfers temp better than a good heavy duty hose)

 

Saisons!

 

+1 to Jayhem's method. Also use just tap in the IC till wort hits 90, then switch over to "ice water pre chiller"

 

and a +1 to brewing to the season but you still need to get to pitch temps