There is no place in brewing where this is as easily illustrated as it is in temperature control. Because temperature control makes such a significant difference in the quality of your brew.
While it is true that investing in the right fermentation equipment to control your temperature will get you excellent results, there are actually a lot of ways to control the fermentation temperature of your beer without breaking the bank. Here are seven ways to hit your temperature without breaking the budget.
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1. Swamp Cooler
Swamp coolers are a type of air conditioner that adds humidity to the air to help the temperature feel lower than it really is. This method is called evaporative cooling, and can also be used to lower the temperature of your fermenters.
2. Ice Bath
Some brewers will submerge their fermenter nearly to the level of beer in the fermenter and then use frozen bottles of water to help regulate the temperature. For this trick, you’ll need a large rubbermaid or other tub (some towels under it wouldn’t be remiss, either), some water, some frozen water bottles and some ice. Using the ice and frozen water bottles to lower the temperature of the water should also keep the temperature of your fermenter down.
3. Basements and Garages
These are common for lagering in the winter. In essence, you find any place you can that is around the right temperature and use the ambient temperature to keep the fermentation temp down. It’s great in a pinch, but can be unreliable as far as temperature consistency goes.
4. Build Your Own Refrigerator
Building your own refrigerator is as old as lagering itself. As a matter of fact, the original lager brewers used this method to make their beer. In Germany, there are Kellerwelds (cellar hills) in which caves have been carved in the hillside (like hobbit holes for beer). In the winter, the caves were opened up with the beer to be aged inside to keep them cool. As the weather warmed up, the brewers would pack snow in a special ditch carved in the side of the cavern and then they would seal them up, creating makeshift refrigeration.
5. The Brew Belt
The methods above will all help you keep it cool, but you may also need to heat things up in your fermentation room. If you’re using a basement or closet that gets a bit cool, you can always use a Brew Belt to keep your fermentation at the target range.
6. Space Heater
This is a common way of keeping your beer warm in a basement or closet, and is sometimes paired with one of the other methods for cooling beer to try and hit a tighter area of control. The space heater heats the ambient temperature of the room, which is a little slow to heat the actual liquid in your fermenter, but those gradual changes can actually be beneficial, as moving the temperature too fast can cause your yeast to freak out.
7. Use an Old Fridge or Freezer
It may seem like a no-brainer, but finding a used refrigerator or freezer and adding a temperature controller is one of the best ways to achieve great temperature control throughout the fermentation process. Whether you need to keep it cool or warm, the insulation of a refrigerator will help you maintain a consistent temperature.
Thanks for your reading.
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Helen
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