Warm Weather Brewing

Posted on 06.26.09 8:21PM under Brewing, Fermentation Friday

Today is Fermentation Friday! Brew Dudes are hosting!!

Today’s topic is “how do you beat the heat brewing in summer months”

This is a little easy for me. Temperature control! Take any full size fridge with a temperature controller, with a temperature sensing probe taped to the side of the fermenter, and you’ve got instant basement anywhere. Very helpful for basement-free folks like myself.

When you live at 5 feet above sea level, any basement would end up more like an indoor pool. So I have a garage now. But thanks to good old electricity and latent energy of phase change of exotic gases, I can keep any thing any temperature I choose. I choose 66 degrees F. At first, it’s cooling to 66. But as the ferment progresses, after a few days of vigor, it’s time to let it up to 68, and then a few days later, up to 70. At times, that requires heat input.

This is where summer brewing is nice. Never have to worry about switching to heat mode. Don’t have to open the face of the controller, move two jumpers, and hook up the heating pad. Just keep the fridge connected in cool down mode, and you got whatever temp you want.

In fact, I like brewing in warm weather best of all. It’s nice to brew when it’s warm, so you don’t need a winter coat on just to keep your body warm while you’re cooking wort. The kids can frolic out front of the garage, and stop by periodically as their curiosity allows, and it’s an opportunity to bask in the sunshine of the day for a few minutes here and there in between the brew day tasks of productivity. The heat of the summer sun helps to maintain mash temperatures in all manner of mashing vessels. Maybe it even helps to boil sooner.

The only real problem with summer brewing is warm tap water. It takes a lot longer to chill the wort with the immersion chiller in the summer. I might just put another coil of copper in line so I can submerge it in ice/ice water as a tap water pre-chilling heat exchanger to help with this problem in the coming year. I have another small copper coil. I have plenty of buckets. I can get ice right from the kitchen fridge (er… freezer). I just need like two dollars worth of tubing.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to figure out what I need next for my brewhouse, and for gushing again about the pure ecstasy of fermentation temperature control.

Read Comments

  1. Posted by Hunington on 06.27.09 3:55 pm

    Heating pad? Hmmm . . . have to try that. I had been using a food dehydrator bottom, but this sounds better, as it’s less likely to warp the interior of the fridge. I assume that you just put it under the carboy? How hot can you get — can you make it to mid-70s for Saisons?

  2. Posted by Home Brewing In The Summer | Brew Dudes on 06.30.09 5:17 am

    [...] Keith rocks the fridge with a temperature controller. [...]

  3. Posted by Keith Brainard on 06.30.09 8:00 pm

    I use one “made for brewing“. It’s just a little 25 watt heating pad. I have the buckets on the bottom shelf of the fridge, and the heating pad under that, where the bins for veggies would normally be. If I didn’t have that space, I’d probably tape it to the wall of the fridge or maybe the inside of the door.

    I think the specs claim it can keep the fridge about 20 degrees above ambient. I had one in a fridge in my detached garage, and it was able to keep the fridge at least 45-50 even when it was 0 outside and really really cold in the garage. So I think it would work for all manner of Belgians.

    Thanks for reading, and for commenting!

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