Brewing in the summertime

[perryni]

I am planning to do some brews in the coming weeks/months but have heard its not advisable to brew during the summer due to wild yeast etc.

How risky is it or should I just go ahead as normal?

Cheers
Nick

[Kev888]

Well I guess its slightly more of a risk, there are also more flies around to get in the brew and so on and some of the little blighters seen to be attracted to sweet wort and fermenting beer probably due to the CO2.

But if you sanitise everything (thats used post-boil) properly beforehand and then take care from the moment your wort starts to cool through to bottling/kegging then the risk is still fairly small; I wouldn't ferment with the FV open but if you stop dust/flies accessing the wort all should be well unless you're quite unlucky. My biggest time of doubt is when I have the IC in the boiler - I can't get the lid on and flies seem attracted to the wort sometimes; keep meaning to fix that but I always forget. Ive never actually had a problem though, and I brew all summer. My Fv just has a normal lid that the CO2 can escape past, its not hermetically sealed with an airlock or anything like that.

If homebrewers stop in the summer its more normally if they have no way to keep the fermentation cool enough, or to store/condition the beer at coolish temperatures afterwards. And its a particular challenge if you use true lager yeast. I've got a fermentation fridge so my biggest issue is the tap water is no longer cool enough for the IC to bring the wort to temperature easily before pitching - it uses much more water and I'm on a meter.

Cheers
Kev

[chivelegs]

Get hold of some old (nylon) net curtains, boil them and spread them over your boiler during chilling. Keeps the nasty little black beerflies of your cooling wort.

[worldsbestbrewer]

Stop brewing during the summer - you must be joking:-) The rate my neighbours are going through my beer need to take it up full time. It's light fruity beer time. Get yourself some temperature control. No cheap chillers with recirc on ebay? Have you evewr visited some small commercial breweries - I bet yours looks like a palace compared to some!

[Renzyme]

Stop brewing during the summer - you must be joking:-) The rate my neighbours are going through my beer need to take it up full time. It's light fruity beer time. Get yourself some temperature control. No cheap chillers with recirc on ebay? Have you evewr visited some small commercial breweries - I bet yours looks like a palace compared to some!

Could you link to an example of appropriate temperature control. My main concern this time of year is controlling the fermentation temperature. The ambient temperature is hovvering around the upper end of my temperature range (in this case 24C). Factor in the exothermic heat from the fermentation and I forsee some unhealthily toasty yeast.

[worldsbestbrewer]

It works on casks - a wet muslin or cloths around the barrel take it down a few degrees - natural evaporation from a bit of a draft takes away some of the heat from the vessel. Used at a lot of beer festivals.
If yr not on a water meter make up a small coil from copper or whatever (plastic mdp wil do it ) and either wrap it around the vessel (use a karrimat or bubblewrap to insulate) or a coil inside will be more efficient. I've got a fixed coil - well a half coil about 6 inches dia towards the top of the fermenter and a half coil further down with a vertical section joining them from 10mm copper - the idea being one coil is a couple of inches under the liquid surface for a 25litre ferment and the top ditto for45-50 litres. Two bastardised 15mm tank fittings into push fits on the outside, hey presto. I use a chiller to recirc water through it. It's lagged with a karrimat and easily gets 50 l down to 4-5C with the chiller - if required as for post ferment.
Despite having heating control by a pdi controller (fished them out of the skip at work and way ovewr the top for this use) off a pt100 probe, I've never got around to fixing them up to control the cooling in 15 yrs. I just look at the weather forecast and tell the chiller to come on for an hour in the afternoon and early evening or whatever. (Really on chillers it's the recirc pump you really want to control, not the chiller itself which should be on all the time) . Know your equipment:-)
You could do much the same with energising a solenoid to let tap water through. Rewire the washing machine solenoid:-).
A simple way is to shove the fermenter in the bath with the water at the temp you want assuming the bulk will take much longer to warm/cool. Various similar methods to this with such as a dustbin and run cool water through it for a few mins a day.
A bloke around the corner bought a couple of bits to control his fermenter - i'll ask him what he bought if you like.

[Rookie]

I adjust my yeast choice on my recipes, depending on the weather. Some yeasts are better for warmer fermentations. Belgian yeasts are used way into the 80s F.

[raiderman]

This is a non teknkal suggestion, but standing the FV in a sink of water or the bath works fine. I tend towards the sink now because the wife used to moan whenever she wanted a shower