Lagering with Swamp Cooler

neoanto

Folks im trying to make my first lager as the weather is a bit cooler now.

Im just about finished with my fermentation (this weekend is two weeks and its nearing FG).
But im going to have to lager for 4 weeks after.
I dont have a fridge to put my fermenter in, but it only needs to drop down a few degrees and stay at about 4C ot there abouts.

I was going to make a swamp cooler. Has anyone else done this?
I was just going to get a big basin, fill up until some of the fermenter is covered, then put a wet towel around the fermenter, then i have a fan to blow on the wet towel to lower the temp.

I was wondering if it would freeze my beer? In which case I could leave the heat belt around the fermenter, which is controller by an STC-1000.

Any thoughts on my approach?

loyatemu

are you planning to leave it outside? can't imagine a wet towel + a fan would be enough to freeze 20+ litres of beer. Even if it was outside the temperature would have to drop below 0 for a significant period of time.

How did you keep the fermentation temperature down?

neoanto

Yea ill have it in a garage.

I kept the fermenation temp at 12C. Ambient temperature hasnt really gone past 10C for the last few weeks so no issue there.
I just had the fermenter insulated with a lagging jacket and used my STC-1000 to control the heat belt.

Yea realistically it probably wont freeze. The swamp cooler should get the temp down sufficiently though. I think if done right the evaporative cooling can get about 10C of a difference in temp.

oblivious

neoanto wrote: »

I kept the fermenation temp at 12C. Ambient temperature hasnt really gone past 10C for the last few weeks so no issue there. I just had the fermenter insulated with a lagging jacket and used my STC-1000 to control the heat belt..

That should be grand. Don't worry to much about the lagering process, you could call just call it a kellerbier / Zwickelbier and the are uber cool

sharingan

neoanto wrote: »

Yea realistically it probably wont freeze. The swamp cooler should get the temp down sufficiently though. I think if done right the evaporative cooling can get about 10C of a difference in temp.

It is quite tricky to maintain, and 10C off the ambient sounds very unrealistic. I got about 5C at best. Evaporative cooling works much better at higher temperatures too. You will really need that fan to be going full tilt.

It is winter now, so in an unheated garage, you should be able to do something like a california common without any refrigeration.

Carawaystick

I'd try crash chill it by putting ice in the basin until it melts
The cold weather of the last few days should allow you get it to 4 or so degrees

Once it's below 4 degrees the density inverts and it'll all cool to the same temp by chilling the bottom

(If it was hotter, the warmer beer would stay up in the top of the fermenter)

neoanto

So in the end I consulted How to Brew, and Palmer was saying you can lager for 3-4 weeks at 7C. So i racked to secondary, put it into a but basin/bucket i got in woodies and with the wet towl and fan set up got it at 7C. Got a lagging jacket around the bucket to minimise temp changes.
So i guess ill see how it goes!