Small scale way to lower fermentation temperature?

[ChasinABuzz]

So it's come to my attention that the main issue I am having is that my fermentation area is too hot. I picked an interior wall closet that gets no sunlight but when you live on the top floor of a tar roofed apartment in Hawaii, it still only gets down to about 77-78 apparently....

Are there any simple, small scale ways to lower my fermentation? It's a tiny closet I'll post a picture for reference of it right now. I'm going to be moving everything from where it is now on the top shelf, to the bottom because believe it or not just that 5 feet or so of height drops the temp almost 2 degrees. Ahh the luxuries of living in paradise lol.

I think the best option for me as of right now seems to be a rubbermade tup or two with ice packs in the bottom and some water. Being that I live in a small apartment, I can't just setup a minifridge or anything like that because of the lack of room. I'm not lagering yet, only Ale's as I'm still new and I only use 1 gallon carboys at this point, though I'm going to try a 5gal bucket batch in the coming weeks as well.

 

[Big Monk]

I agree.

 

[CUrchin]

Rubbermaid tub with ice will definitely work as long as you can keep up with the ice swaps. You might also want to wrap the fermenter with a towel and put a fan it to take advantage of evaporative cooling a.k.a. swamp cooling. This is what I do when it's hot in Maine. I will also select yeast based on temperature. For example, S05 is more tolerant to warm weather, whereas Nottingham is not.

 

[ChasinABuzz]

Rubbermaid tub with ice will definitely work as long as you can keep up with the ice swaps. You might also want to wrap the fermenter with a towel and put a fan it to take advantage of evaporative cooling a.k.a. swamp cooling. This is what I do when it's hot in Maine. I will also select yeast based on temperature. For example, S05 is more tolerant to warm weather, whereas Nottingham is not.

Good call I've been using Nottingham. I think I might just start doing double batches of 1gal to get more use out of the yeast

 

[EPbrew]

I used the towel with a fan trick this week with an imperial licorice stout that was getting too hot. It worked pretty good.

We don't have A/C in our house and when the temp got too hot inside last summer I just did a couple saisons. They like hot fermentation temps.