Tips On Keeping A Lager At Below 15deg?

[lukemarsh]

I just put on a brew of Heineken style lager (the Brewcraft concoction) in my 25L fermenter. I have my fermenters in the cellar which is constantly at around 20deg C but for lagers it needs to drop to below 15deg C... I put a couple of ice packs around the fermenter and one on top with a wet towel over the lot and overnight the icepacks melted and the fermenter was only at 18deg C.

Is there any other way to keep a fermenter this cold without putting it in a fridge? Because my fridge has no setting for certain temperatures, only numbered settings which probably range between 1 deg and 5 deg.

Note: I used the Saflager yeast instead of the cap yeast... so it has to be under 15 deg to work!

 

[Effect]

I had a fridge that used to ice up eveything in the fridge on any setting. I bought a timer for the fridge so that it turned on for 30 minutes every hour during the day and only 15 minutes every hour at night. That solved the problem.

Maybe you could do something similar...

 

[benno1973]

The SafLager will work at higher temps, but it'll just be a god-awful beer.

As you're aware, you need to drop the temp as quickly as possible, and preferably to around 12C. Options are:

1. Buy a tempmate from one of the sponsors above or your local HBS. Check out ebay, and they're even cheaper. This is the best option, although it won't help you in this instance unless your HBS stocks them and you can get it wired up quickly.

2. Put a timer on your fridge to turn off and on a few times a day. With a bit of trial and error, you can probably get it to sit somewhere in lager temperatures.

3. Buy one of those big 100-can coolers from bunnings. They're essentially a big bucket that folds flat, and designed to take ice and drinks. From memory, they cost around $16, were on special last time I looked. Put your fermenter in it, half fill it with water, and then put in 3 or 4 or possibly more frozen softdrink bottles. Then wrap a towel around the fermenter so that the wicking action allows water to wick to the top of the fermenter. Then if you need to cool it further, add more ice or set up a fan to blow across the towel. Essentially this is like an evaporative air conditioner.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Good luck...

BTW - don't be put off if the beer isn't great. Buy a temp controller and persevere. Temp control is one of the most important aspects of brewing

 

[lukemarsh]

How does the mini digital temperature controller, and other gadgets available at HBS, work?

 

[benno1973]

You (actually a qualified electrician if you don't know what you're doing) need to wire it up and put it in an appropriate box (easy to do, but it's not an 'off-the-shelf' solution). It has both ends of an extension cord coming out of the box, and you plug one end into the power point and one end into the fridge. Then you put the thermal probe in the fridge, and when required, the controller will supply power to the fridge to turn on. When the fridge hits 12C (or whatever you've set it at), the controller turns the power off to the fridge.

Check out this thread...

 

[Bigbott]

Heres how i control the temps in summer anyway no problem in winter here !! :lol:

just re-use the kits & fill & freeze them keeps the temp around 18 deg in summer perfect B)
changed every morn,



& some of the results ah perfect i also re-use bottles as well



& heres a pic of the boys room ha ha





Cheers Rob

 

[bconnery]

I just put on a brew of Heineken style lager (the Brewcraft concoction) in my 25L fermenter. I have my fermenters in the cellar which is constantly at around 20deg C but for lagers it needs to drop to below 15deg C... I put a couple of ice packs around the fermenter and one on top with a wet towel over the lot and overnight the icepacks melted and the fermenter was only at 18deg C.

Is there any other way to keep a fermenter this cold without putting it in a fridge? Because my fridge has no setting for certain temperatures, only numbered settings which probably range between 1 deg and 5 deg.

Note: I used the Saflager yeast instead of the cap yeast... so it has to be under 15 deg to work!

A temp control box, fridgemate or others, is the best option by far.

However, before I had one I used to do lagers in my fridge without one. I found that with the fridge at it's warmest setting the beer wouldn't get below 10-12 degrees anyway.

 

[drsmurto]

I just put on a brew of Heineken style lager (the Brewcraft concoction) in my 25L fermenter. I have my fermenters in the cellar which is constantly at around 20deg C but for lagers it needs to drop to below 15deg C... I put a couple of ice packs around the fermenter and one on top with a wet towel over the lot and overnight the icepacks melted and the fermenter was only at 18deg C.

Is there any other way to keep a fermenter this cold without putting it in a fridge? Because my fridge has no setting for certain temperatures, only numbered settings which probably range between 1 deg and 5 deg.

Note: I used the Saflager yeast instead of the cap yeast... so it has to be under 15 deg to work!

Prior to buying a fridgemate i used a dead fridge with a few frozen bottles.

I no longer use the fridge and if you are super keen you can come up to the hills and take it away for free.

This is her in action during summer - 2 x 2L bottles rotated twice daily did the trick, at this time of the year you could get away with once a day or leave the fridge outside and it should keep it cool.

 

[newguy]

I built a lagering chamber just this past year. It's just a large wooden box, big enough for two carboys plus about 5cm (at least) space around them, insulated with a sheet 25mm of styrofoam insulation. During the high krausen phase I need to swap the ice pack every 12 hours but I can safely get by with changing it every 24 hours once it gets past that. It can easily maintain 10C with no trouble.

 

[Maple]

I built a lagering chamber just this past year. It's just a large wooden box, big enough for two carboys plus about 5cm (at least) space around them, insulated with a sheet 25mm of styrofoam insulation. During the high krausen phase I need to swap the ice pack every 12 hours but I can safely get by with changing it every 24 hours once it gets past that. It can easily maintain 10C with no trouble.

Surely you mean heat paks not ice... still snowing up there?

edit: just kidding, but surely you'll be sipping a few in sadness seeing the canucks out...at least the habs are still a chance.

 

[manticle]

I built a lagering chamber just this past year. It's just a large wooden box, big enough for two carboys plus about 5cm (at least) space around them, insulated with a sheet 25mm of styrofoam insulation. During the high krausen phase I need to swap the ice pack every 12 hours but I can safely get by with changing it every 24 hours once it gets past that. It can easily maintain 10C with no trouble.

I'm looking at doing exactly the same thing with an extra compartment for bottled beer. Do you have any pictures? I have a vision in my head but realise I will undergo loads of frustrated swearing before I finally make what I want.

 

[Nick JD]

Because my fridge has no setting for certain temperatures, only numbered settings which probably range between 1 deg and 5 deg.

Note: I used the Saflager yeast instead of the cap yeast... so it has to be under 15 deg to work!

Whoa! You mean you haven't checked the maximum temperature setting on your fridge?! Most fridges (I don't know why) set to "1", or the warmest stable temperature they can maintain will be about 11C at the bottom and about 14C at the top. Try it - set it to "warmest" and chuck a thermometer in there. $10 says it will be 10C+ and stable.

Secondly, Saflager S23 will not produce a revolting beer at 18C. The types of compounds it'll produce are almost all "fruity". What you'll get won't be a lager, but more an ale - but it won't taste "bad", just not very lagery.

Lager yeasts at low ale temperatures make quite nice beer - just not lager beer.

 

[komodo]

I've thought about making a box with a automotive heater core as a heat exchange with a fan controlled by a tempmate type device with a reservoir in the keg fridge. But i think about a lot of things and do very little

 

[lukemarsh]

Since my last post on here I actually went ahead and did exactly this! I have a fridge outside my house which I used to store beer for parties etc where an outside fridge was handy, but since I've emptied it and chucked the fermenter in there with a wet towel around it and a couple of ice packs here and there... with the fridge turned off, in 24 hours it's stayed at around 12 - 13 degrees! Perfick.

Still haven't really managed to catch the temperature during the day (sunny day)... it's only been in there for a day. Dunno what it'd be like in summer, because outside temp thesedays is around 16 anyway.

 

[waggastew]

I have a lager currently sitting sweet at 12degC in a Smash cooler, Kaiser Soze's (I love that name!) number 3 option. I rotate 3L milk/juice containers with ice in them morning and night. At the moment two bottles during the day and one at night is enough. May drop back to one and one with this cold snap. No need for the wet towel and it is alot less messy without it.

Key things are:

1. Some sort of insulating container e.g Smash Cooler, foam box, old fridge

2. Getting the wort to target temp quickly after pitching. I use two strategies. #1 is to chuck a block of ice (made in an ice cream container in which I placed near boiling water, cooled with the lid on, and then froze) into the fermentor as you make it up to volume. #2 is to use a few more bottles of ice/change more frequently in the first day/two. Once its down to the target temp it needs alot less ice to maintain as their is a large thermal mass.

I would love to be able to justify the 2nd fridge/thermostat route but part of the attraction of HB is the cheap beer factor. A $120 device plus ongoing elec bills mean that the ice blocks are here to stay at my house for a while yet. My wife just gave birth to our first baby so I should have some spare cash in about....oh I don't know....21 years or so!

 

[Stinger]

I'm going to wait until the next road side rubbish removal (I call it the open air Op Shop) and have a look for a fridge or two that has been diced in favour of the shiny new side by side with added ice maker. If it doesn't stink, and thermostat is buggered then it is add ice strategy. If the thermostat works a little bit, well 10-15 degrees is the temp range that I am after so still a win win. Sometimes it is just the seal that is buggered and a touch up with some silicone is pretty cheap too!

Although the temp out in the sleepout is getting down to under 15 deg at night now so fridge door could stay open and get cool then shut during the day to stay cool.

Having said that the Muntons Ale that is in the fermenter at the moment looked like it had stalled at 1020 (temp a bit low in the sleepout) so I brought it inside and now bubbling away happily

 

[newguy]

Sorry for the delay. Here are two pictures of my insulated chest. The lid was askew in the 2nd picture. All joints are caulked. One standard ice pack will keep 40l of actively fermenting beer at about 10-12C for 12h. All walls and the lid are 25mm foam insulation while the floor is 50mm. The lumber is some scrap I had lying around.

 

[peterhop]

I made an insulated chest (50 mm polystyrene) for my fermenter. Cooled with a bottle of frozen water. Worked well.

A generic problem with coolers like this is that because it is cool then moisture from the air will condense inside. After about 10 brews mould grows on the inside of the chest. Maybe starsan will prevent this - I'll be trying it next summer.