Styles To Brew Without A Fridge

[taflex]

I wanna do a brew this weekend and don't have a fridge for fermentors yet, so the temperature will range from around 21 to 24C during fermentation.

Obviously I'll be brewing an ale of some sort, but I was wondering what the best styles are to brew like this other than stout (not that I've got anything against a good stout (apart from my thirsty gullet)).

An unhopped extract brew will be what I'm looking at doing.

Cheers

 

[pint of lager]

Depends on the yeast you are using. Most of the kit yeasts will work ok at that temp, but obviously is better if you casn keep at 18 deg,

If you can brew at 21-24 degrees, it is easy with low tech solutions to get it a bit lower. A wet towel draped over the fermenter, a fan pointing at the fermenter, Chinese food containers filled with water and frozen sitting on top of the fermenter, stand the fermenter in a basin of water with 2 litre iceblocks floating in it, all of these will bring the temp down.

As to recipes, are you going to boil extract and work out the hopping yourself? Plain extract and hops, you can use the Morgans specialty tins to vary the recipe, or do some specialty grain steeping.

PLain extract and Cascade hops works as an APA. Easy to do.

 

[taflex]

At this stage the fermentor is gonna be sitting on a tile floor in the cupboard of an air conditioned house, and the low tech solutions (although they sound good) probably won't be a great option as I won't be able to check the fermentor on a regular basis.

And yep, PoL, boiling extract, hopping myself and maybe steeping some grain was the plan. I do love the APA style, so another of them ain't out of the question. One last clincher that I forgot, I'll probably be using a dry yeast.

 

[morry]

Have you thought about a wheat beer? They can ferment a little higher and still come out alright. I had one a couple of weeks ago that went up to 24 and still turned out fine.

 

[Bobby]

with wheat beers you really need to controll the temp depending on the profile you want.
a wheat beer fermented at 19 compared to one fermented at 23 will be different.

 

[dicko]

Stand the fermenter in a tub/bin/container of water.
( I have used a nallys fish tub about 40ltres capacity with 15 to 20 litres of water in it)
This maintains a lot more even temperature and you can add ice to the water if it gets too hot during the day as well as I put a fish tank heater set at 18 degc so that the brew doesnt cool too much over night.
Apart from my temp controlled fermentation fridge, I found this is the best way to maintain a reasonable temp for ale fermentation.
The water seems to smooth out the temp fluctuations and allows you to make adjustment with ice quite easily.
Oh! and one more thing, - It doesnt make a mess when the ice melts.
Cheers

 

[sosman]

I have a recipe for beer that started out as a pale ale but I ended up being dubbed bananarama. Pitching california lager yeast at 28C has probably got something to do with it. The details need a whole other post.

 

[johnno]

Hi taflex,,
a while back i brewed jayse's skunk fart pale ale that is in the recipe section. I did a partial mash and used Wyeast 1056 and all ahtnum hops. That was brewed at around a constant 22 C.
I am currently :chug: it and its a fine beer. I dont know if its all those hops but this one does not seem to have been affected by the fluctuation of the storage temperatue as much as all the other brews I currently have around.
It would be fairly easy to make as an extract brew.

cheers

 

[taflex]

Cool, I'll check it out. Thanks.

 

[bonk]

for a dried yeast some home brew stores are selling the 1056 in dried form now. otherwise try the safale or maybe even nottinham. i know the jovial one has nottingham.

 

[taflex]

I might give an extract version of Skunk Fart a go. After looking over the Skunk Fart thread I noticed Jayse at one point said he used 50 grams of Nottingham yeast. That seems like lots to me, but I've still never used more than 15 grams of dried yeast. Would results be much better and/or different if you used that much?