Minor temp control on fermenter

[JayH]

Hey everyone,

I haven't posted in a while due to moving from Michigan to North Carolina. Wow, what a difference environment affects brewing! First, I used to get nice clean COLD water from my private well in MI that came cruising out of my tap at a nice 50-ish degrees. Now, I have 75 degree chlorine infested tap water trickling out of the city water system. That sucks. Also, my ambient temperature is about 10-15 degrees warmer inside than it was in MI.

My fermentation is hovering around 73 - 74 consistantly, which freaks me out when I was used to an easy 68.

Any ideas to take off that 4 - 6 degrees? I was thinking the ice bath might be too much and I won't be able to set up a temp contolled fridge for a few months.

Thanks for the input.

Jay

[DannyW]

Now that the weather is drying out a bit, the wet tee-shirt trick will probably do that for you. No, you don't wear it, your carboy does

I'm also having good luck with putting a carboy and a 2L frozen water bottle in a big cooler, covering the whole mess with a blanket, and swapping the frozen jug once or twice a day. no water in the cooler, just the fermenter and the water bottle. This is in my 100F Florida garage, too, so it really works as long as what's in the fermenter starts out near your target temp.

[bub]

do the t-shirt thing...
1. put carboy in short bucket or pan
B. put t-shirt over carboy
III. pour cold water over shirt into pan (make sure shirt hangs into the water)
If this isn't enough via evaporation then point a small fan at it.. just keep the shirt wet and in the water (it should wick) and you can drop a few degrees.
BUB

[pungentodor]

I suggest going to asheville one weekend if you get the chance. It's pretty much the beer mecca of NC. Several brewpubs and breweries. Check out Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company, delicious pizza and beer. There's also green man brewing and check out barley's for a good beer bar.

Also next year, or this year if there are any tickets left look for the world beer fest in raleigh and durham. There may be a festival in asheville too, i think it's called brewgrass.

I don't know jack about hickory though except i pass through it on the way to my parent's.

[Pseudolus]

do the t-shirt thing...
1. put carboy in short bucket or pan
B. put t-shirt over carboy
III. pour cold water over shirt into pan (make sure shirt hangs into the water)
If this isn't enough via evaporation then point a small fan at it.. just keep the shirt wet and in the water (it should wick) and you can drop a few degrees.
BUB

This also works if you replace "carboy" with "girlfriend".

[Crut]

sad to see another MI brewer leaving the state, good luck down there. I'll post how good the water is here from time to time to remind you how good it was

[JayH]

Thanks guys, I'll let you know how many headaches from the fusel alcohols my homebrew has deteriorated to. No really, they seem to be just on the edge of okay. One is a belgian tripel so it may not suffer too bad and the other is a brown ale that I pitched "cold" (65-66) with a big 2000 ml starter and let it rip and warm up, so hopefully the large pitch and lower initial temp will curb the esters and fusels...we'll see.

Hickory, NC actually has a great local brewery - the Olde Hickory Brewery; and a great LHBS that is getting off the ground. There is also a nice brew club that is mainly a tasting club with a bunch of homebrewers called CLASS. The head of the club is Bobby Bush who writes regionally for Celebrator and the Ale Street News.

Later