Stay Cool

I discovered a thread on homebrewtalk.com asking members which techniques/equipment/knowledge had yielded the biggest improvement in their beer. Almost without exception, the answers included fermentation temperature control.

Each yeast strain has an operating range. Trying to ferment outside that range can lead to stuck/incomplete fermentation and/or the development of sharp tasting fusel alcohols. Even the top and bottom of the operating range can yield different flavors from the yeast.

Yesterday, I took a hydrometer sample from on of my batches and was not-so-amazed to find the temperature of the sample to be 75 degrees - outside normal operating range for my yeast which is 60 - 72 degrees. It has been hot here and the basement is slowly warming up as we have no climate control at all down there. It gets some ambient cooling from the AC units upstairs, but not much.

So here is my low no-budget cooling set up: A tray of water with a frozen 2 liter in it, old T-shirts over the primaries, and a fan. The water wicks up the T-shirts (just starting in the picture) and the fan helps speed evaporation hopefully cooling the air around the buckets. The frozen 2 liter lasts about 24 hours, and then gets swapped for a fresh one. There is also a dash of Star San in the tray of water to make sure it stays clean.

I checked the temperature this morning. I did not put a frozen 2 liter in yesterday as they were still freezing , but the temperature of the beer had already dropped 3 degrees. I added the now frozen 2 liter this morning, so we'll see how it is tomorrow.

At some point I would like to get a nice big chest freezer so I can keep fermentation temps right where I want them, but until then I'm hoping this set up will at least let me keep the temps within the acceptable range.

EDIT: 24 hours later, the beer is down to 68 degrees. Awesome!