cooling ideas

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Permalink Reply by James P on November 2, 2009 at 7:07pm

Hey Martin

In a bath or basin with cold water and wet towel, in addition a fan blowing on it may help.

If you have the capacity to freeze about 6 1.5 litre bottles, then use two at a time against the side of the fermenter, and swap them every 12 / 24 hours.

Edit: just noticed the bath comment, get yourself a party tub from somewhere like payless plastics, or cut a 44 gallon drum down.

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Permalink Reply by Michael on November 2, 2009 at 7:09pm

Martin,

Are you using a heating pad? If so, turn it off, or raise the bucket off of the pad by a couple inches. (I know, you are probably not using this.)

If not, how about putting the fermenting bucket into a larger bucket filled with water? I have also heard of people wrapping their vessel with a wet shirt.

A final solution is that I saw a bloke use a bunch of styrofoam panels and built a box with a number of compartments. He put ice in one compartment, and a fan gently pulled the cold air across the fermenting bucket. Check this out, it looks real cheap to build: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXGUrmvedIo

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Permalink Reply by martin w on November 2, 2009 at 7:18pm

i'm actually using a heatlamp below the fermenter connected to a thermostat just to maintain temperature at night, i'll get some bottles in the freezer and try to source something large enough to sit the fermenter in.

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Permalink Reply by jt on November 2, 2009 at 8:29pm

try not using any heating at all. If you pitch a yeast @ say 20C there'll be some lag time and it'll drop down a bit. But when fermemntation kicks in it'll generate a fair bit of heat itself. OK, I know it's cooler at night, but it takes a while for 20+ litres to warm up & cool down. Also, if it's hot, use a concrete floor as a cooling / stabilising infuence for the beer. I find a beer on the convcrete floor is 4 to 5 degrees cooler than on the bench

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Permalink Reply by martin w on November 2, 2009 at 8:44pm

the heating kicks in at 19 degrees, with this brew i'd be surprised if its kicked in at all, we had snow down here 2 weeks ago and temps were dropping quite a bit so cooling has only just become an issue

the concrete floor suggestion is something i didn't think of, the fermenters on a shelf in the garage at the moment(convenient siphoning height),i'll move it down there and hopefully see some results along with a wet towel!

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Permalink Reply by jt on November 2, 2009 at 9:15pm

Sorry, hasty reply while the kids were creating a ruckus. The concrete acts as a heat sink and is very a very stablelising infuence on the fermenter.

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