Brewing in the summer

[underwaterdan]

I am all done with my summer brews, and looking to make a few octoberfest beers for a party I want to have(don't tell the wife). My issue is I usually put my primary in the basement to ferment, but the temps in the summer get up to about 75+ because of the dehumidifier I keep down there. I assume there is no way I can ferment at that high of a temp and still make a quality beer, so anyone have any thoughts, or know of a beer/yeast combo that would work at that high of a temp?

 

[uwjester]

You probably aren't going to be able to do a lager oktoberfest, but you could still pull off an ale version. There are a couple of recipes in the database here for oktoberfast beers, basically the malt/hops bill with an ale yeast. 75 is still a little hot for that, but you could do some evaporative cooling to drop the fermentation temperature a few degrees. Soak some towels in water, drape them over the fermenter and blow a fan at them. Another way to bring down the temp is to put the fermenter in a water bath and drop frozen water bottles in them every day or so, depending on how fast your water is heating up. You could dump ice, but the water bottles are removable and re-freezable. Good luck.

 

[chthonik]

+1 to ice bottles and wet towels with a fan- should be more than enough to get your temps ion a good ale range.

 

[gxm]

That is a good temp to do a saison with 3724, or even a little hotter.

 

[johnnyc]

I did an Oktoberfest Ale with Kolsch yeast. Came out really well. I still did my best to keep the temp below 70 and used a big starter.

 

[Trubadour]

I used an ice bucket for a while and it worked great. That is, until I scored a free fridge off of CL with a temp controller on the side. You can find used fridges for next to nothing, and it's great being able to control your ferment temps without worry / effort. If SWMBO will let you, I'm sure one of those would look great in your basement

 

[david_42]

Put your fermenter in a tub of water in front of the dehumidifier. The drier the air, the more cooling you'll get.

 

[carl spakler]

I use the bucket of water an ice method, it does a good job of keeping things cool, not lager cool though.

Side question -->I just pulled my most recent batch out of the tub of water and frozen soda bottle system after ~ 4 weeks. Do people worry about anything growing in that water? Should I drop some sanitizer or something into that to prevent critters? I know it is unlikely they'll get into the beer, but I'd prefer to not ferment in a festering swamp...if you catch my meaning.