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Cold Fermenting Without a Freezer
Living in North Dakota im sure i could just wait till winter and be fine. But seeings as Im inpatient and i want to do a lager but have no place to try to acheve lager temps. I cant afford to go buy a old freezer or anything much like that. My basement during the summer is around 60. I was wondering if any one has any ideas that might work a bit better then what im think or if it sounds like i might just want to wait.
I was thinking about taking taking a tub (23 1/2" x 17 1/2" x 15 1/2") with some ice water and put a blanket over it, simple but i know that would have to be adding a lot of ice and taking out a lot of water, so maybe doing it with 1 gallon plastic jugs that i freeze. i do have a freezer with enough space to keep two one gallon plastic jugs in at all times for something rotate out. Finding a balance may be difficult but im willing to invest the time till i get the money to buy something that i can actually control the enviornment a little better.
Any and all input would be awesome and is very appreciated. 
Thanks
Zach
If you can get ahold of some sort of temp controller (your gonna need one anyway for the freezer later on). Hook the temp controller up to a some sort of water pump. fish tank pump maybe. get an old cooler full of ice and water and run a line from the cold to the pump to whatever the carboy is sitting in then back to the cooler. This way you get exactish temp control for your lager without guessing and you don't have to get an extra freezer. The trick is finding one cooler large enough to handle a carboy, and keeping the other cooler cold enough. You could use one of those huge ice-chest deals and put some sort of partition in the middle to separate the areas and have the pump only pump a short distance. You would be able to keep things colder that way.
I was planning on setting something like this up until I found a freezer real cheap on Craigslist. it ended up being cheaper to by the freezer than all the materials for the other deal.
Good luck
ID
Without using a temp controlled area, a swamp cooler would work, just be prepared to have a thermo on hand, and be ready to change out ice packs every day.
What lager type were you looking to make? You could get away with a cream ale idea, ferment at 60 with an ale yeast, then secondary for awhile and achieve similar results. You could also go steam beer direction, san fran lager strain, and also ferment at your 60. If you like big beers, you could also go baltic porter type style, and ferment at your 60. If you dont want any of those and want a traditional pale lager, you really need to find a consistant 50 degree area or method for best results.
thirsty wrote:
Without using a temp controlled area, a swamp cooler would work, just be prepared to have a thermo on hand, and be ready to change out ice packs every day.
I'm kinda confused, what do you mean by swamp cooler, we have swamp coolers/evaporative coolers where I live on our roves for house cooling.
GuyNMT wrote:
[I'm kinda confused, what do you mean by swamp cooler.
A swamp cooler is just like what ID was suggesting. A cooler large enough to submerge your fermenter.
I think your frozen water jug idea might work. You might need more than two gallons of ice, but you'll only be able to tell if you try it.
Irondavy wrote:
If you can get ahold of some sort of temp controller (your gonna need one anyway for the freezer later on). Hook the temp controller up to a some sort of water pump. fish tank pump maybe.
That works out almost perfect from me actually. My mom re-modeled her house a few years ago and i know she doesnt toss anything out, she only live about a half hour out of town. I used to have a fish tank pump that might work for this as well, plus a couple old coolers. They might be small but as long as most of the carboy fits it should be okay right? I could use the blanket for a wrap cover type thing.. Now all i have to do is find the pump and drive a half hour...... lol.
thirsty wrote:
What lager type were you looking to make? You could get away with a cream ale idea, ferment at 60 with an ale yeast, then secondary for awhile and achieve similar results. You could also go steam beer direction, san fran lager strain, and also ferment at your 60. If you like big beers, you could also go baltic porter type style, and ferment at your 60. If you dont want any of those and want a traditional pale lager, you really need to find a consistant 50 degree area or method for best results.
I am ready to put the time into the ice water changing every day or twice a day or three times, how many every i need to do for now im willing.
With the cream ale i read some place that they used to split it (or brew two batches of it) and ferment half lager and the other half ale. I would be interested in trying that. I would like to do a steam beer some time soon, being so new to brewing and so little time and money right now but wanting to try so many things. For now i was thinking something along the lines of a pale lager, a basic recipe for my first one so if i mess up hopefully it will be a little more easy to pick out what i did wrong. 
If anyone knows any "generic" lager recipe PM me? or post them? or yes.....
-Zach
P.S. - this is why i tend to not post things, im bad with grammer and i ramble about things that have nothing to do with what the topic really is (or rabbit trails). So for when i do post in the future, i appologize now. 
P.s.s - For now to start getting the temp down, i did get a styrofoam and am trying the ice thing jugs thing. Im sitting at 48 F with 3 gallons of water in a glass carboy. I like to do smaller batches when im first trying something, normally no bigger then 3 gallons.
I use a "swamp cooler" on all my beers, with great success, to a point.
I use a rubbermaid tote and fill it halfway with water at my fermenting temp. Right now I have two beers fermenting at 62 degrees in a 70 degree house. I freeze a bunch of those 12 oz. plastic water bottles and add them as needed. Usually I put a few in before work and then change them out when I get home. I have a remote thermometer taped to the carboy and it stays within a degree or so. While I'm not doing lager temps, I do cold crash the same way, to about 45 degrees. It's a little harder but can be done.
I also use this method in reverse to ramp up my temp. at the end of fermentation, before I cold crash it.
Good luck.
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