this weather...

[chuffer]

....is lovely n all that but having to fanny around now trying to keep my brew cool. Came home today to find it at 25oC....had to fill a trug with ice water and put the FV in until it cooled to 20 again. The forecast tomorrow says 26 and 30 on wed so reckon I'll be wrestling with the temps for the next couple of days.....looks like the next thing on the agenda is a brew fridge

 

[Leon103]

Two words - brew fridge

Best invention ever

 

[IainM]

Maaaaan, I need to move house. No room for a brew fridge here. I fear for my mosaic smath. Hopefully it is mostly done now and won't get too messed up.

 

[Covrich]

Brew jacket are developing an immersion chiller/heater which goes inside a brewbag and inside your fermenter essentially removing the footprint for a fridge.. looks a great idea but I think it is going to be pricey

 

[BeardySi]

Tis the season for a saison

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

[Jon75]

I've seen something called a "Cool Brewing Bag" which is basically a big insulated bag into which goes the FV along with bottles of frozen water. I've seen it at a couple of UK sites for about £50, discussion at US forums indicates that it seems quite effective. I too don't have space for a brew fridge and am considering picking one up. Current temps where I brew are 29C.

 

[Robin54]

I've seen something called a "Cool Brewing Bag" which is basically a big insulated bag into which goes the FV along with bottles of frozen water. I've seen it at a couple of UK sites for about �£50, discussion at US forums indicates that it seems quite effective. I too don't have space for a brew fridge and am considering picking one up. Current temps where I brew are 29C.

Yep, its too effing hot and hotter tomorrow.
Fortunately nothing in the bin at present!

 

[dad_of_jon]

Yep, its too effing hot and hotter tomorrow.
Fortunately nothing in the bin at present!

yup bottled my saison last week!

 

[Dads_Ale]

I've seen something called a "Cool Brewing Bag" which is basically a big insulated bag into which goes the FV along with bottles of frozen water. I've seen it at a couple of UK sites for about �£50, discussion at US forums indicates that it seems quite effective. I too don't have space for a brew fridge and am considering picking one up. Current temps where I brew are 29C.

These are pretty good. I have one and although I haven't used it for my FV I have used it to keep cornies cool.
Currently have 2 cornies in one in the shed with the current ambient temp in the shed at just under 30c (probably went higher during the day) and the temp reading from the side of one of the cornies about half way up is 21c. They both went in on Sunday and they were at about 22c so that's a lot of liquid to cool down. Bear in mind they would have been at 30c by now out of the bag.
I have two 4 pint milk bottles and a couple of smaller water bottles in there at the moment. In this weather they need changing over twice a day during the initial cooling down but its no problem.

 

[Robin54]

These are pretty good. I have one and although I haven't used it for my FV I have used it to keep cornies cool.
Currently have 2 cornies in one in the shed with the current ambient temp in the shed at just under 30c (probably went higher during the day) and the temp reading from the side of one of the cornies about half way up is 21c. They both went in on Sunday and they were at about 22c so that's a lot of liquid to cool down. Bear in mind they would have been at 30c by now out of the bag.
I have two 4 pint milk bottles and a couple of smaller water bottles in there at the moment. In this weather they need changing over twice a day during the initial cooling down but its no problem.

time to put on your 'Budgie Smugglers' and pour a cold one mate!:mrgreen:

 

[Jon75]

These are pretty good. I have one and although I haven't used it for my FV I have used it to keep cornies cool.
Currently have 2 cornies in one in the shed with the current ambient temp in the shed at just under 30c (probably went higher during the day) and the temp reading from the side of one of the cornies about half way up is 21c. They both went in on Sunday and they were at about 22c so that's a lot of liquid to cool down. Bear in mind they would have been at 30c by now out of the bag.
I have two 4 pint milk bottles and a couple of smaller water bottles in there at the moment. In this weather they need changing over twice a day during the initial cooling down but its no problem.

That is good to know thank you. That seems to agree with the claims that a 2 litre bottle gives a 5F temperature drop with a potential max drop of 30F and therefore could potentially be usable for lagers. Might have to invest in one of these.

 

[Dads_Ale]

time to put on your 'Budgie Smugglers' and pour a cold one mate!:mrgreen:

Even better is the reason I'm having to use the cool bag as the fridges are full of kegs, so nice and cold at 6c :)

Not so sure about the budgie smugglers though, don't want to upset the neighbors :lol::lol:

 

[Spoc]

On this note my brew shed cooler has just broken 28c in their today with no way to cool the thing down I have 3 brews in fv so am nearly crying with the forecast for tomorrow

 

[chuffer]

Well one way to resolve the situation is to complain about it to anyone who'll listen....i did and a mate pointed out that he has a redundant fridge gathering dust in his shed that I can have....bonza!

 

[ericmark]

My move to refrigeration was by accident. We had insurance on the Hotpoint fridge/freezer and the light started to flash on/off when we opened fridge door, the Hotpoint man took one look at back of fridge and condemned the lot saying the ice forming at back was a sign the thermal insulation had failed. I moved into garage as a handy insulated box allowing me to move brewing into garage. At first I only brewed in winter, but found keeping the brew in the box required the ambient temperature in garage to be 16°C to ensure the brew did not exceed 20°C in first few days, once first 10 days had elapsed then there was no problem, but it is those first 10 days which are all important.

So this year run out of stock so started summer brewing, I used an energy meter on the freezer to see how much cooling it needed. My thoughts were if the freezer failed I would know if there was a chance of using bottles of ice to keep it cool. It was not promising, on the 22nd June this year started a new brew, by the 27th June it had used 0.52 kWh to keep it cool, I was holding it at 18.5°C but 1872000 Joules or 447.418738 k Calories where a calorie is the energy required to raise one gram of water 1°C so water out of the fridge at 4°C to keep at 20°C it would require 14 two litre bottles of water cooled to 4°C over 5 days, so it would need changing twice a day. OK freezing the water may help, but can you afford to be freezing two x two milk bottles full of water in freezer without risking over heating the food.

I considered no, specially when I found my cool box bottles had been removed from freezer as my wife follows her buy food, dump food strategy, I still have not worked out why we need two freezers crammed full, leaving no room for my ice cream, but that's the way she works. So for me at lease swapping bottles of frozen water is a non starter.

As to the old tried and tested idea of a towel draped over the fermentor with the ends in water with a fan blowing on it, yes in Algeria hanging the water bottles off the wing mirror worked, but in the Sahara it is rather dry, at the moment outside my house is 83% humidity at 19.6°C it is just not dry enough here for it to work.

I have looked at my electric cool box with uses the Peltier effect very inefficient, but the lid of the cool box in theroy at least could be put on top of any insulated container. However having tried to use one in my car on a 4 hour drive I am sure a simple cool block would have worked better.

So I have really just two options, only brew in the winter, or use refrigeration. The main problem with putting bottles of cold stuff in the brewing beer is it can get too cold you really have no control, plus you can introduce bugs. If I put bottles of cold water in the door of the fridge it may save the day with an unexpected hot spell in September or May, but not really a method that can be used in June, July and August.

 

[ericmark]

This morning 5:20 a.m. temperature outside was 16.3°C but garage where my brewing is done was 23°C the demijohn in freezer is at 19.4°C with the air at 19.6°C the demijohn controls the fridge/freezer but the fermentor was only at 21.6°C cooler than I had expected as when the fridge/freezer motor runs it seems to cool freezer first so no heat really removed from fridge so it has remained cool simply because of the mass and it must be just about ready to bottle. In the last 6 days it has used 0.08 kWh to maintain the temperature, which is a lot less than expected. So it would seem if you have first 10 days cool your OK, it's those first 10 days where the fermentation is heating as well as ambient.

So to save on power going to open garage door and let it cool down.

 

[rubby]

Getting a brew fridge doesn't looks surprising.

It's a sure thing you're gonna get.

 

[ericmark]

I bought my mother one of these freezers to go on top of her fridge/freezer to keep a larger stock of ready meals, it went wrong, the thermostat went faulty, and I used a MH1210A temperature controller to run it, which is very similar to the STC-1000 while waiting for a replacement from Hong Kong as a result I know it is easy to replace the original thermostat with an electronic type, but sensor would need to be the metal type to push it up the pocket if you wanted to do it that way. There are no electrics in the door so it could be removed or drilled and a cooling liquid pumped between it and a fermentor using some thing as simple as a caravan water pump. I am not convinced it takes up any less space than a brewing fridge as you have both the freezer unit and the fermentor taking up space rather than just the fermentor fridge. I also have the pre-(EU) No 1060/2010 of 28 September 2010

version of this fridge marked Woolworths which at that time included a mains input, today EU rules means the adaptor from mains to 12 volt can't be built in. But again you could pump water from one of these around a fermentor and back. They use the Peltier effect so can be used at any angle where the freezer has to be upright. My Peltier effect cool box lid has fans built in on both sides outer and inner so would not work simply strapped to side of fermentor but I bet there are some models which could be simply strapped to side of fermentor.

Although I have a fridge/freezer for brewing in I am sure it will some day fail so I am considering what to replace it with. But even new a cheap fridge is just over £100 so is it really worth all the messing around? Is it not just simpler either to brew extra in the winter or buy a fridge to brew in?

 

[geigercntr]

Warning folks: had my bottled saison conditioning in the kitchen. Achiement unlocked: Bottle Bomb.

Getting the blighters in the fridge...

 

[DoctorMick]

Warning folks: had my bottled saison conditioning in the kitchen. Achiement unlocked: Bottle Bomb.

Getting the blighters in the fridge...

I had my first bottle bomb this morning, thankfully the bottle didn't explode but the cap came off. :twisted: Seems to have been an isolated incident so I'm hoping it just wasn't capped very well.