I just brewed a nice all grain cream ale kit from Northern Brewer and really had a nice day of brewing with no problems at all. I put my fermenter in the bath tub in our spare bathroom and everything was going along nicely as fementation temps were running between 68 and 70 degrees. The last couple of days, we have had unseasonably warm weather and when I checked the stick on thermometer on the side of my fermenter, it was at the high end of the Temp scale. I immediately stopped up the tub and ran some cold water in the bottom of the tub. I hope I was able to stop anything bad from happening to the beer, but I think I am going to have to run the air conditioner to keep a fermentable temp on my beer. The max time that it could have been at that temp is less than 1/2 a day. I will turn the air on and hope for the best. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.
Pick up a large tub from the big box stores to put the fermenter in. Fill with water. Add frozen soda bottles/milk jugs/what ever to keep the temp down.
If you have a cooler, that would be better. Less heat applied to the water.
see my signature line for other ideas.
If you are 3-4 days in, you may not have any flavor issues.
A wet t-shirt over the fermenter with a fan blowing on it can lower the temperature by about 5 degrees via evaporative cooling. Keep the whole setup in a tub of an inch or two of water so that the t-shirt can wick more water up as it evaporates.
Cream ale turned out fantastic taste is better than expected. The only problem is I did not have enough liquid in my boil and only ended up with 4 gallons when done instead of 5. To get a taste like I got this time, I would take that trade off every time. I probably would get the same good taste with 5 as well as 4 and don’t want to waste good beer.
Good to hear it turned out to your liking. For your next brew calculate expected volume losses in each step of the process from mash in to boil off. Your technique is most likely good since the beer was to your liking. The beer will probably be just as good ending with 5 gallons next time.
