I’m looking for a little advice or feedback on brewing in the garage in the winter.
I live in Minnesota where the winters are long and cold. My wife and I moved to a new house recently in which I have a nice three car attached garage that is insulated. It is not heated. I have water and a sink plumbed to the garage with a floor drain for access. I made the water shutoffs on the inside of the house so that I can drain them after use to avoid freezing. My brewing system uses propane burners.
My main concern is with condensation buildup from the boil. In my previous garage, I brewed all winter long and the windows would fog up even with the garage door open. This new garage is a lot bigger, but I want to avoid any condensation/mold issues. The new garage does not have any windows, so I would need to brew with the doors open to evacuate CO if it’s there. I’ve toyed with the idea of installing some sort of an industrial vent hood over my brew rig and venting that to the outside, but I would like to avoid that investment if I can.
Does anyone have any current process/setup that they use to avoid condensation build up in the winter? I’d hate to have to quit brewing when it gets too cold to brew outside!
One simple way, if you batch sparge with a cooler mash tun, is to just heat strike/sparge water and do the boil outside, mash and clean inside. Otherwise open door and fan I guess.
If you or your wife don’t mind the smell that brewing makes, one option is to move to a smaller BIAB setup indoors on the range top for the worst parts of the winter. You can crank out 2-3 gallon batches with ease. Super easy brew days make for more frequent (and potentially experimental) brew days and more variety in what you have available to drink/share. Just a thought. I am fortunate in that my wife actually loves the smell of boiling wort.
We have the opposite problem in TX - I need to brew outdoors in the summer because it heats the house up too much to do it indoors. In the winters I’ll often go back to 2 gallon BIAB batches on the stovetop just for variety’s sake and to test out different ideas.
I’ve seen people rig up exhaust hoods, like you might have over your stove top, to push steam outside.
I have the same issue in my house in the winter. I usually open the windows, set up some fans, and put on a jacket since my house is about to be freezing 8)
If fan doesn’t work, Fan + curtain around brewing area and fan should work. The curtain should be nylon and away from any fire. Nomex panels can be added to the curtain for insurance.
I put a small 14" fan above the kettle and a couple feet behind it pointing down and towards the garage door. Works good and no moisture buildup inside. My garage is heated though.
I am lucky to have a service door and a window but the key is cross ventilation and exiting the condensation near the top, so the service door with a fan blowing out works for me. You could just lift the main door a bit and push air out the service door, if I get your set up correctly.
If it’s absolutely brutal, consider smaller batches indoors on the stove (at least for the mash, if not also the boil).
This is all I ever do, winter spring summer fall! I don’t understand the obsession with large batches and big equipment. Save time on brewing day, experiment a lot more, get more variety, yadda yadda.
I brew 90%+ in the garage, but my kettle is actually wide enough to straddle 2 burners on the gas stove. I wussed out and brewed a couple batches on the stove last winter - took a little longer to reach boil obviously but made 5.5 gallon batches just fine. Takes a wide kettle to hit 2 burners though.
I have 3 small kettles. Works fine on the stovetop with 3 kettles if I want to brew 5 gallons. Or, just brew 1.7-2.5 gallons and you’re fine in one kettle, if your stove can handle it which it most likely can (my glass-top can handle this no problem).
Those small batches wouldn’t make it through Friday evening with the crew that drinks my beers. So, I typically brew 10 gallon batches of the routine lagers and ales and save the smaller batches for atypicals - like 5 gallon sours. But I may go even smaller on the sours to try more varieties this winter. Scaling and associated math and fear of non-linear impacts have kept me from it so far. But Dave’s points make very good sense,especially at single digit temps or lower…
I’m in Chicago and brew in the garage all year as well. I just set up a box fan and open the overhead door half way, the box fan creates enough circulation where condensation isn’t an issue, its a standard 2 car garage.
We don’t have Minnesota winters but close sometimes. I have brew days where I have to unlock my water line from the frost free after filling the MT and HLT or it will be frozen solid by the time I need it for the chiller. I just wear longjohns, and my carhart insulated bibs, and keep the shop door open.
Perhaps the greatest invention of the late Stone Age is the concept of “indoors”.
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Brewing outdoors and in the cold is not an issue at all for me. In fact, I’d rather brew outdoors as I do 5/10 gallon batches and all of my fermentation space is in the garage as well.
The bigger issue for me is keeping my new garage from having possible mold/drywall issues from excessive condensation. My ceilings are fairly high at about 11 or 12 feet, so condensation may not be as big an issue as I am considering? I guess the only way to find out is to brew when it’s cold!
Fellow Minnesotan here. Finally got fed up with cold weather brewing, frozen hoses and the like and moved into the basement and went electric. I use this fan mounted to the ceiling and venting out the basement window with no moisture problem at all. The thing moves a ton of air. Takes my brew house humidity from 70% to 60% no problem. They also have a 12" version that may exhaust your larger space better. http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200007224_200007224
It makes sense for some people to brew large batches. If you don’t drink much or have that many other people drinking your beer, then it makes more sense to brew smaller.
Brewing inside in the winter is a great idea. It adds humidity to the house and heat. I brew inside year round, probably shouldn’t in the summer months though. Gets a bit humid in my place.