1st time brewer ... Worried about fermentation temps in hot climate?

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KPBrews

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Greetings, Brewers!

First post here, actually, first post about brewing, period.

I'm a long time beer snob, and first time brewer, and I'm really really excited to get started!

As usual for me, starting a new hobby, I probably spent way too much to get going, but it just seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, and I lucked into some extra cash, so I splurged. I have MoreBeer's biggest starter kit, complete with an 8 gallon kettle, 6 gallon glass carbon, and a full kegging setup! (Bottling gear, too, but the price to add kegging was so much cheaper than buying later, I couldn't resist) I'll stick with extract kits for now, and see how things go before I let my upgraditis take over and move to All Grain. (Although I'm not 100% clear on the advantages, although I have yet to start serious research... One step at a time!)

X4PdnD.jpg


Anyway, I'm hoping to brew my first batch this weekend. The kit came with a complete extract kit for a Blonde Ale, so I guess that will be my first. :)

I've done my research and I'm not too worried about the basic initial brewing steps. But this brew kit is literally everything I have, though, so there are a few areas where I have shortcomings in my setup, compared to others with fancier rigs. I was very relieved when I tested my kettle and confirmed I could bring it to a full roiling boil on my kitchen stove. It took an hour to bring 6.5 gallons of water (in my 8 gal kettle) to a good boil, but it did it. My local brew shop was trying to convince me it wouldn't work out, so I guess they were wrong on that? Or just trying to sell me something. :mad:

Anyway, my biggest concern, I think, it fermentation temps. I live in The Los Angeles area. Just as an example, temps this weekend are expected to be in the low 100s. Now, my house has air conditioning, of course. But it's an old house with so-so insulation, and my power bills are off the charts as it is, so the thermostat is usually set at 78.

I realize this is pretty high. Will I be able to make drinkable beer? Lagers are obviously out, with their super chilly temp needs, but I've never had much use for them anyway. (Not a fan of IPAs other similarly hoppy brews, either) I prefer Belgians the most, followed by good solid ales, stouts and other similarly darkish beers. (I've read Belgians and Saisons do better at high temps, so that's encouraging!) Anyway, obviously lots of people brew in L.A. so it's not an insurmountable issue, but what can one do short of investing in a dedicated fridge? (Probably not an option... And given I'm married to a designer who cares a LOT about how our house looks at all times, anything overly bulky or smelly or loud is probably out, too)

I actually have a nearby buddy who brews, but he has no AC (he's not right in the head, IMO) so his solution is to only brew in the dead of winter when ambient temps here occasionally dip into the 60s. ;) Useless for help with this aspect!

Sooo... Any tips? :mug:
 
Check craigslist or the local classifides and you can usually puck up a pretty cheap chest freezer and get a temp controller to plug it in to so you can control your fermentation temps. In the mean time just get a clothes basket or something you can put the fermenter into a water bath (I add a cap full of bleach to keep the bugs away) and freeze some water bottles and rotate them out every 8 hours or so. That'll keep your ale fermentation temps down in the mid 60s. Great set up though for starting out! Also, i didnt see any StarSan, I'd pick up a jug of that as well, its very easy to use.
 
As Cooper says above, you'll need to control your fermentation temps. An ambient temperature of 78 means that active fermentation will lift your brew into the 80s. Everything but a saison will taste bad at those temperatures.

As he also states, it is possible to keep temperatures down without going to great expense. You can make yourself a 'swamp cooler' and rotate ice-packs in it. At those temps it looks like you'll need to rotate them 2-3 times a day.

That is probably your most critical issue. So other than that you'll just have to learn as you go along regarding all the other issues that new brewers tend to face. Ask lots of questions on here - you'll usually get excellent advice quickly. Without this place I'd be lucky to produce something drinkable 50% of the time. Now, and with everyone's help here, even my mistakes are usually better than any commercial beer I've had the misfortune of having to drink.
 
Thanks! The issue with the chest freezer (or small fridge) is space more than price. I literally don't have a place I can put one. My wife is already giving my new pile of brewing gear "that look" and asking me where it's going to live.

We have a spare bathtub but while I could get away with using it for 2-3 days without issue, I definitely can't leave a carboy fermenting in it for 2+ weeks. :/
 
Temp control should be #1. If you cannot keep it the yeast in the happy temp zone, I would not brew. If you have a brew store near by, pick up some saison yeast,like mentioned above, and maybe swap out the hops for something a bit more Belgiumy and brew away :rockin:
 
I have had great success with my swamp cooler. It is a plastic bin with a few inches of water it in. Towel wrapped around the fermenter and sitting in the water. I rotate in frozen milk jugs. I put mine in a central closet. The temp in the house is 74 in the summer and I could easily get 66-68 degrees in my fermenter as read from a stick on thermometer strip.

I think you can get below 70 degrees. If you start below 70. Get your wort below 70 when you pitch and then straight into the swamp cooler. You can aid in this by cooling your top off water.

I think my setup is aided by the small interior closest. I haven't measured the ambient in the closet but my guess is the swamp cooler is actually cooling the small space down as well.
 
You could probably keep temps under control using your second bathtub as the water source for a swamp cooler. You will need to have at least 2 gallon jugs of frozen water that will be used to keep the water in the bathtub cold. I would put one frozen gallon jug in the bathtub at a time for 12-18 hours and then refreeze it while the other one is in there.

If you're wanting to ferment clean ale yeasts you need to keep the temperature under 70F and ~66F is usually the sweet zone.

Keep in mind that you're going to need to hold it at those temperatures for around 5-7 days before bumping it up to 78F (ambient temps) for a week or two.
 
Hmm. Yeah, sounds like I'll definitely need something.

Homemade swamp cooler will never fly with my wife, unfortunately.

Has anyone tried the Cool-Brewing thing? I actually clicked on an ad here on the site and it looks interesting. Good reviews at Amazon. Cheaper than a fridge, no electricity, and I think I can stick it in the small closet I had planned to stash my carboy in for fermentation before the temp issue arose.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008EKD7CQ/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Oh, and just to wrap some mentions I forgot to respond to:

I definitely have StarSan. I definitely need more. ;) (Plenty of nearby places to purchase, so no problem)

I don't think I can get away with using the tub for a week. But if I can use something like the Cool Brew soft bag and some frozen jugs, I think this can work out. The "Son of Fermentation Chiller" looks like a higher-tech version of the Cool Brewing bag... a homemade cooler to hold the bottles, plus the fan and temp controller. Only issue it, at that size, seems like I may as well buy a small fridge, which I don't have room for. I like that the soft bag practically disappears when I'm not using it.

Is it correct that I only need to maintain the cool temps for about a week? And then I can let it warm up to ambient? That's great! I sort of thought it had to stay cold for the entire run. Swapping in frozen bottles daily (or more) for 3 weeks sounds obnoxious, but a week should be doable.
 
In case no one else has convinced you. With room temps of ~78, your fermentation will be over 80 degrees easy. This will NOT make for good beer.

The one exception is saisons. Those yeasts can safely be used over 90F with excellent results. If you cannot get good temperature control, give this style a try. I have a lot of experience with brewing them if you need help
 
Yeah, no need to over-kill it with a bath-tub full of water. Besides, you'll need lots of ice to keep that volume of water cold. Just something big enough to fit the fermenter and a some large ice-packs in. I rarely need to swamp-cooler my brews, but when I do I use a big plastic storage bin that in itself is a bit too big for the job. The bag that MadHomebrewer has pictured above is ideal if you want to spend money on it, otherwise keep an eye out for storage bins, etc. Keep in mind that the bigger it is, the stronger it has to be to hold the water that will be pressuring against the sides.
 
When I started, I used a swamp cooler (ice chest) and it worked great but is a PITA to swap out bottles two times a day. But I was able to keep temps in the low-mid 60's for the entire fermentation time. I used a combination of 16.9oz water bottles, 20 oz bottles and quart bottles. I went with an ice chest bc it's insulated vs a tote but either will work.
Before you brew, at least get a tote for a swamp cooler.
 
Thanks, everyone! I picked up the Cool Brewing Fermentation Bag. I have frozen water bottles in the freezer, ready to go, and I'm filling my bucket with RO water for my very first batch. The clock has officially started running!
 
I'm in nearby Long Beach, and even without A/C (due to it not being in this apartment and I can't afford any more rent) I can ferment about any ale with my Cool Brew bag. Just keep an eye on it at least twice a day.
 
How hot is your house? If you are keeping it less than 77 use a wet towel around your fermenter. Put the bucket in a tub or a dish bin from Wal-Mart with about two inches of water in the bottom. Make sure the towel stays wet. Never hurts to have some kind of fan blowing on it too. That will keep it cold enough. The ice is probably over kill in my humble opinion, but if you want to do that, it doesn't hurt.
 
I'm a newbie and I just finished an Amber Ale during the heat wave we had in S. California. I was able to keep my fermenting temp. stable using a water bath, a towel around carbon and using ice bottles(changing 2X a day). BTW I do my fermenting in my garage and it was really hot in there.
 
Well, that was a long first brew day. Five hours long, roughly. My biggest issue is cooling the wort, since my tap water is 80 degrees, and all I have is a copper coil immersion chiller. In the end, after chewing through at least 30 gallons of tap water (I captured it in buckets once the outflow water was around 90, which took about 20 minutes) the coil only got the wort down to a little under 100 degrees, which is obviously inadequate. But at that point I jerry-rigged a gravity fed siphon with a bucket of water (stacked on another, inverted, bucket to get the height I needed) with 5 lbs of ice in it, and that actually brought the outflow water down to 65, and I was able to cool the wort down to 75 fairly straightforward from there.

A better system is definitely necessary, moving forward. I'm definitely picking up a pump, and I'll probably buy a plate chiller (I'm looking at the Duda Diesel). Then I can pre-chill the water with the immersion coil in a 5 gallon bucket of ice water on it's way to the plate chiller, and that should get the job done much more efficiently.

But now my carboy is filled and all sealed up with the air lock, with the yeast is hard at work inside the Cool Brewing bag for the next two to three weeks. Woohoo!

I guess now I have two weeks of wondering whether I screwed anything up or not...
 
KPBrews said:
Thanks! The issue with the chest freezer (or small fridge) is space more than price. I literally don't have a place I can put one. My wife is already giving my new pile of brewing gear "that look" and asking me where it's going to live.

We have a spare bathtub but while I could get away with using it for 2-3 days without issue, I definitely can't leave a carboy fermenting in it for 2+ weeks. :/
Click to expand...

I saw the picture of your new gear and immediately thought, "This is a single guy". Wrong, obviously. I know what "that look" is.

Have fun!

All the Best,
D. White
 
The BrewJacket looks awesome. :)

But for $300 I could buy a fridge easily. And a fridge can handle multiple carboys, which the BrewJacket cannot. But the Brew-Cooler can handle two. In less space than either option. Or two brew coolers could handle 4! (For half the price of one BrewJacket)

If I knew I would only ever want to do one brew at a time, I'd still probably go for the BrewJacket. Because I'm a geek like that and I love the cool factor. :) But for now, practicality wins out. Maybe someday if I stick with this hobby and move to a fancy AG setup and am already spending freely and investing more space...
 
KPBrews said:
But for now, practicality wins out. Maybe someday if
Click to expand...

Give another look to the swamp cooler, then. It's dirt cheap ($10 for one of the big blue tubs you put a keg in at a party available at the big box store, or CL one for a couple bucks), use a shirt you already have. The freezer-blocks definitely help, but a fan will do awesome as well: it increases the amount of evaporation of water that wicks up through the shirt. You can get a deltaT of 10 degrees, easy.

Convince your wife with its thriftiness. Also, you only need it up and running for the first handful (say 4-5, but others may chime in) days of fermentation. Once you've passed the hot-and-heavy first part of the fermentation, you can just let things clean up at room temperature. So, it's only around for a few days, then you can tuck the fermenter away in a closet for the rest of primary.

My first few batches without temperature control were drinkable, but temperature control has absoLUTELY been the #1 best bang-for-the-buck change in my process. So do whatever you can manage, afford, or convince SWMBO to go along with... but do SOMETHING.
 
I notice you've got an airlock on there. While the bag is certainly easier to clean than the ceiling, I recommend you rig up a blow-off tube. You may not do some painting with this batch, but it's just a matter of time.
 
Just a FYI, I usually do 3-4days in the bag in the low 60's then leave it open with one last frozen bottle to let it slowly ramp up. Then I don't mess with it, to let it finish out near the low 70's.
 
KPBrews said:
Hmm. Yeah, sounds like I'll definitely need something.

Homemade swamp cooler will never fly with my wife, unfortunately.

Has anyone tried the Cool-Brewing thing? I actually clicked on an ad here on the site and it looks interesting. Good reviews at Amazon. Cheaper than a fridge, no electricity, and I think I can stick it in the small closet I had planned to stash my carboy in for fermentation before the temp issue arose.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008EKD7CQ/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
Click to expand...



I use the cool brewing cooler. I keep the house at 75 so I needed something to keep the yeast happy when they are doing work. I add 3 two liter bottles when the carboy first goes in and then swap to two bottles every morning. It works great with ale yeast but I have not tried to lager. My only complaint is finding something big enough to hold blow off and still fit. Luckily, when it over fills my jar, the mess is contained in the bag.
 
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If anything, this thing is working TOO well. I came in this morning and was happy to see some action finally happening on top, but it had cooled down to 54 degrees! I changed from two 1 gal bottles to a 1 gal plus a 2l bottle, so hopefully that will allow the temps to get back into the 60s. Will the time spent at 54 hurt the ale? I used Safale US-05 yeast, and reactivated it in RO filtered water before pitching. Took a long time to get going, but it looks like things are starting happen, despite the cold temps. A layer of bubbles is finally starting to form!

wPVPij.jpg
 
Brewbie said:
I use the cool brewing cooler. I keep the house at 75 so I needed something to keep the yeast happy when they are doing work. I add 3 two liter bottles when the carboy first goes in and then swap to two bottles every morning. It works great with ale yeast but I have not tried to lager. My only complaint is finding something big enough to hold blow off and still fit. Luckily, when it over fills my jar, the mess is contained in the bag.
Click to expand...

When I start doing ales that are at more risk of blow-off, perhaps I'll rig up a blow-off tube into a smaller bottle, like a 1 gal bottle, which should still fit in there. Considering I'm checking things twice a day, that would have a reasonable chance at catching any blow off before it got too messy.

At least, that's how it plays in my back of my mind.

Of course, the great thing about the Cool-Brewing bag is even if there is a blow off, I'll just have to take it outside and hose it off, and I'm back in business. :D
 
You're seeing the beginning stages of fermentation, in 24 hours from now you should see a rocking krausen and lots of activity. Personally I would take the ice bottle out and let the beer free rise to ~63-64F before popping some ice back in. If your wort is too cold it will cause the yeast to go dormant before fermentation is finished.
 
You could start off brewing a Saison using Wyeast 3724 which likes high temperatures and does well at 90 though you might actually have the opposite problem of finding a place that has a relatively stable but higher than room temperature. Saison's are awesome btw but as a beer snob you already knew that.

I used some variation of a swamp cooler for more than a decade to brew ales when I first started. While I think my output has improved since then by using a variety of different controllers (STC-1000 or Johnson or whatever) and refrigerators/freezers I've been where you are as to limited space and a skeptical spouse.

My advice unrelated to temperature control is to find a way to get your SO into your brewing corner. I did that by brewing a special spiced Christmas beer for a party we've had almost every year for the last 20. I also regularly brew beers that she likes such as my Blue Moon clone and the previously mention Saisons.
 
Sailingeric said:
Temp control should be #1. If you cannot keep it the yeast in the happy temp zone, I would not brew. If you have a brew store near by, pick up some saison yeast,like mentioned above, and maybe swap out the hops for something a bit more Belgiumy and brew away :rockin:
Click to expand...

^^^What this guy said.
 
KPBrews said:
If anything, this thing is working TOO well. I came in this morning and was happy to see some action finally happening on top, but it had cooled down to 54 degrees! I changed from two 1 gal bottles to a 1 gal plus a 2l bottle, so hopefully that will allow the temps to get back into the 60s. Will the time spent at 54 hurt the ale? I used Safale US-05 yeast, and reactivated it in RO filtered water before pitching. Took a long time to get going, but it looks like things are starting happen, despite the cold temps. A layer of bubbles is finally starting to form!

wPVPij.jpg
Click to expand...

Well, the ice-pack seems to be directly across from the temp-strip, so you might be getting a false reading, with it reading cooler than it actually is. Maybe twist the carboy so the strip isn't right at that one ice-bottle?
 
slym2none said:
Well, the ice-pack seems to be directly across from the temp-strip, so you might be getting a false reading, with it reading cooler than it actually is. Maybe twist the carboy so the strip isn't right at that one ice-bottle?
Click to expand...

Oops, forgot to respond in this thread.

I moved the ice bottle to the other side, no change, so it seems to be accurate.

I also grabbed a cheap digital aquarium thermometer with a probe (Amazon has them for like $2, so I bought a few some time ago, for my aquariums, and still had a couple of unused ones), and stuck the probe in, so I can check the temps inside easily to satisfy my curiosity, without having to unzip the top all the dang time and disturb things inside. The temps match, so it's reliable enough, IMO. (I still open it daily to swap water bottles, and so far, the cheap digital unit has matched the LCD strip every time) Very handy when I get nervous about the temps and want to check it... now I can just glance at the readout on top and know, with a reasonable level of confidence, what the temp is inside, without opening the whole thing up and disturbing the yeast party going on in there. :)

All that said, I've drastically reduced the amount of ice bottles in there (just one 2l bottle!), and it seems to be holding steady in the low-to-mid 60s now, which I think it just about perfect. Nice roiling gunk shooting around in the wort, too.
 
Get a regular cooler. Freeze 2 x 1L plastic bottles with water. Put fermenting beer in cooler. Rotate frozen bottles into it and your freezer. Pack empty space with towels.
 

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