Try a tub full of water. Use bottles of ice to keep the temp low. The more mass, the less prone to temp swings.
+1. Did it for years. If you can cool your wort to the low 60s before pitching and change frozen water bottles out at least twice a day, you can make pretty good beer. Denny did it for decades.
Before I got a chest freezer, I also used the tub full of water method (changing out ice bottles twice a day). It works pretty well.
They also make an insulated cooler bag designed to fit a carboy that you can chill down with ice packs. I think they are $60 from MoreBeer. I don’t have any personal experience with this product, but it might be worth checking out.
So I’m going to brew on Wednesday and I had no luck on convincing SWMBO on buying a chest freezer, looks like I’ll try out the tub method this time. How full do y’all fill the tub, just a couple inches? Is that enough to displace temp throughout the entire carboy?
as full as you can without floating the fermenter. 3/4’s up should do. The idea is to increase the thermal mass to prevent temp swings. Bonus is the ability to heat or cool as well. Frozen water bottles are a PIA but work on the cool side. Aquarium heaters work well for warming it up.
Keep your eye out for the next time she spends $600 on a purse and make your move. A chest freezer/w temp control will really make a big difference in your brews. But you certainly can get by with the water filled tub method and make great beers out of it.
Another thing you can do is keep a towel wrapped around the carboy but in the water far enough that it wicks moisture into the towel.
As added insurance be sure to cool your wort down into the low to mid 60s before picthing your yeats (and make sure you have enough yeast - see the pitching calc at www.mrmalty.com to see how much yeast or how big a starter you will need) and then you can let the temp raise a few degrees during fementation. After 48-72 hours the temp won’t be a big deal any more. Most of the fusels are generated during the first 48 hours so if you can watch the temp closly for 2-3 days afterward you can raise it to high 60s/low 70s with no worries.
+1 to this
Ill add that once it does start to go up you want to avoid it dropping back down again before the yeast are done. Lets say you are at 1.020 hoping for or expecting 1.010. Your temp has crept up to 70 but its been after the major flavor contribution time. Youre gold. Unless it gets cold over night and the beer drops to 60. They are getting toward the end of their job anyway with only ten points to go. They are struggling to find energy to eat up nasty bi products. Then comes a temp drop. They might just call it a day and leave you with an under attenuated diacetyl bomb. Point being that for every argument to keep temp down, keeping it up is important too.
Your closet is probably the worst place you can keep that beer. It won’t have any access to the air conditioning to help cool it down, which means you’re just trapping your beer up with all the heat in your home plus the heat it is generating.
I’ve always had bad luck here in north Texas with the whole swamp cooler thing. It’s just too humid here. Keeping the fermentor in a tub of water and swap out frozen bottles of water is much better for keeping a cooler mass but during the summer I still always had problems keeping the beer much cooler than room temperature. Getting a reliable way to control temperature was far and away the best purchase I could have made for the quality of my beer. You can use the tub of water plus pick yeast that are most tolerant of the temperatures in your house but it is still going to limit your brewing opportunities and you may never be very happy with the quality of your beer unless you really enjoy saisons enough to brew them almost exclusively.
If you think it might be a volcanic bomb get a plastic tote and put your carbon in that. Worst case you are cleaning plastic not carpet
I’m actually lucky enough that SWMBO spends way more money on me than herself. The closet is in a spare room that no one goes to and has a fan so it’s actually one of the coolest places in the house. I’ve been doing a trial run with the tub and frozen water bottles and will go with that this time, but I may not have to worry too much. We’ve had a crazy unusual cool front come in that shows no signs of leaving, and the closet has been sitting at a nice 67* for about a week. Thanks for all the help everybody.
That’s still on the edge of too warm. the fermentation will bring the temp up 5-10 degrees so the wort at height of activity will be in the mid to upper 70’s which is pretty warm.
Yesterday I had the great fortune to find a perfectly working chest freezer and am now ready to set up a ferm chamber. Since I was able to get the freezer so cheap I would really like to get a dual temp temperature controller, mainly because the freezer will stay in the garage. I saw this one on Northern Brewer. http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brewing/brewing-equipment/fermenting-equipment/thermostar-dual-mode-digital-temperature-controller.html
I was also thinking about the Ranco 211000, but if this does the same thing I’d get the cheaper one. Does anyone have experience with the ThermoStar? Or what do y’all use?