Before I used my AC for temperature control, that's what I used......we refer to it as a "SWAMP COOLER"......putting a towel around it and letting it wick water with a fan blowing on it works great also....DaaB wrote:Ok, it's been done before and it's not rocket science but as we may have a spot of hot weather then it might be of interest to some people.
I'm keeping using this to keep my latest mini mash cool.
Temperature in the kitchen (at 6pm) 26 deg c, temperature of the water in the bucket, 19 deg c and the ice pack were added at around 10 am.
If you are brewing 25L batches and have 5 x 1 gallon demijohns you can keep the temperature down with 5 cheap buckets some water and 10 ice packs. iirc A couple of years ago the bucket was 75p and the ice packs (recently) were 25p each. Bottles of frozen water do just as well.
EDIT:
Here is post I had back in the spring on another forum that addressed the same problems......glad it's getting ready to finally start cooling down in a few weeks or so......
TIPS ON WARM WEATHER BREWING
BY: DARTGOD
Now that spring is upon us and everyone that brew’s outdoors has their equipment out and kettles fired up one of the number one concerns is going to start coming into play. Without the advantage of having a fridge, freezer, temperature controlled room, basement, or high tech temperature controlled conical fermenter, how do I keep my beer in the temperature ranges called for by the yeast strain and just how do I get my wort down to pitching temperature when my tap water won’t do it?
FERMENTORS
There are several ways to keep your fermenting beer in the 65-70 degree range. If perhaps there is an extra bathroom you can use the tub and fill it with water and place your fermenter in it. You will need to check the temperature of the water in the tub and then adjust it by adding ice packs to get it to the desired temperature and then rotate ice packs in the water once or twice a day to keep the temperature stable. You can also put your fermenter in a tub of water and wrap it with a towel and the wicking action of the water will cool it down (a fan blowing over it will help even more). I personally use a 20 gallon plastic tub (about ten bucks and I also use it to catch my water from my wort chiller and reuse it when I’m cleaning up) that I fill about three quarters full after I put in my fermenter. I put a floating thermometer in the plastic tub and check it twice a day and add ice packs as necessary.
There are also ways to help yourself by using yeasts that operate at a little higher temperatures 68-73 degree range. Another suggestion would be to try brewing some wheat ales whose yeast strains ferment best above 70 degrees and some will ferment at a temperature as high as 80 degrees without affecting the taste.
Wort Chilling
There are several ways to get your wort temperature down such as topping off with cold water, putting it in an ice bath, or the like, but what do you do when your doing a full wort boil and your chiller won’t get your temperature down? Although usually your tap water will get it to pitching temperature, if you live in area that you are having problems with this you can buy or make a pre-chiller. All it is, is an extra wort chiller that you hook up to your hose like usual but instead of it going in the pot it goes in a cooler full of ice water and then connects to the chiller you have in your boil kettle (make sure the pre-chiller has hose in and hose out connections so you can run a hose from it to your regular chiller). This will substantially lower the water temperature going into the kettle so you can get to your pitching temperature. For those who want to cool even faster this is also a good technique for that and it will help in the coagulating process of proteins due to the result of faster cooling.
So don’t let the heat keep you from brewing or thinking you have to brew like crazy to stock up for summer because you can’t beat the heat!!
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GOODBREWING..........