I fit in a brew yesterday morning. Finished in about 4 hours minus cooling the wort from 90 to...... well that was the problem, I was pitching onto a previous cake and the kettle would not cool down and we needed to leave for mothers day. Well I pitched when the wort was about 85*
And put it in the round cooler with a crap load of ice and a little water thinking it would stabalize and yeah the water was like 55* but I can home 7 hours later and the water was 80*
and the blow off tube was going absolutly crazy. I spent the next 30 minutes frantically adding ice until I ran out, then moved it to a larger tub of water thinking it was just heating up the water and still couldn't get the water below 70*
Anyways, my lovely SWMBO goes, my don't you put it in the fridge and I was I don't think I can have the fridge at 65* and not have the top freezer part melt. She said, well take out all the meat and bring it the the inside one and give it a try. Well I am glad she suggested it.
I grabbed the ranco and set it up and seems to be working great and the freezer still had frozen food in it this morning. If this works out I have definately found my new fermentation chamber 9 months out of the year.
I just hope those first 8-9 hours at like 80* aren't going to screw with this beer.
Anyways, that was way off topic, I had a great mothers day too with my mother in law.