BeerBorg

Hi, my son and I are new members. We live near Phoenix and the summers are very hot and arid. With the COVID we are confined pretty much to the house and have decided to home brew some beer. What kind of problems do we need to be aware of when brewing in this extreme heat?

Welcome!

The low humidity won't be a problem I'm about 650 miles due north of you, and it's dry here, as well.

You'll want to make sure to have refrigerated water to add to the wort because the wafer coming out of your trap it's never going to be cool enough to bring the temperature chill enough for pitching the yeast.

On a related note, if you get to the point where you're doing larger batches, you'll need to do something to augment the wort chiller (or go "no chill" as I did).

The "right" answer to controlling fermentation temperatures is to do proper temperature control with a refrigeraator or freezer and a Johnson controller, but that's kind of pricy.

Do you have central air or a swamp cooler? This is important for a couple of reasons. If you're on central air, you know what the temperature is (more or less) where the thermostat is. Also, your internal humidity will be lower. I'll get to why that matters in a bit. With a swamp cooler, you're going to have more variable temperatures and you'll also lose one method of cooling the fermenter.

If you have central air, you can use the same approach that makes a swamp cooler work to cool your fermenter. Get some cheap throw-away aluminum roaster pans (you may be able to find some at the dollar store). Put the fermenter in the pan, fill the pan with water, drape a towel over the fermenter so that the ends dip into the water. Make sure the water level stays high. You will also probably want to add some bleach to the water to keep it from getting funky.

I used to travel a lot, so this "hands off" approach worked well for me. I also ferment in the basement, whch is somewhat cooler than the rest of the house. IIRC, feww Phoenician houses have basements, so that most likely won't help.

If you have a swamp cooler, the towel thing won't work. The towel thing is uing the same basic principle as the swamp cooler. Evaporation cools. But the swamp cooler increased humidity in the house, so it reduces the efficiency of the improvised towel swamp cooler.

Since you're home all day, you can also use a chest cooler and swap out bottles of ice to regulate temperatures. This works whether you have central air or a swamp cooler.

How hot do you keep your house? there are some specialty yeasts that do well with higher temperatures.

Welcome aboard!
While it's more advanced than extract kits, I have brewed a couple of beers that fermented in the eighties. For those I used Belgian yeasts or Kviek. But I also have used ice packs, and do use a chest freezer and controller.

Welcome to the Borg and brewing! As mentioned, some yeasts can do well and are made for higher temperatures but besides what's mentioned above, if you want to ferment in the upper 60's, the Cool Fermenting bag, https://www.morebeer.com/products/cool- ... r-bag.html works well. It kept me going for 3 years in the southern Louisiana summer heat. It's probably available at Amazon too. You will need to swap out ice bottles twice daily (or maybe 3 depending on your house temperature) but it really works well.

Research Kveik yeasts and if you have a local homebrew store, speak to them about it. There are versions out now in the dry format but many more options in the liquid version. I've done fermentation in the upper 90's and it was still clean and very fruity. It also works well in the upper 70's and 80's to give off some different flavors and aromas.

Also if you like Belgian beer or especially Saisons, there are high temperature yeast options. Some people (like me!) actually like Belgian beer or beers with bubblegum and slight phenolic character (think Saison Dupont), so even before Kviek became widely available we had no issues with summer brewing. The yeast used for Dupont (Belgian Saison) is perfectly happy at 90 degrees during active fermentation, and I have had it up to 98 degrees post primary fermentation to get it to finish up quicker without any issues. And some other Belgian beer strains are fine at 78-82 degrees during active fermentation.

"What kind of problems do we need to be aware of when brewing in this extreme heat?"

Most important for me would be temperature control of the wort.

Some ideas;
- use your kitchen stove-top to brew no more than a 3 gallon batch-size
- chill wort best you can before pitching yeast
- put fermentor in a chest cooler
- control fermentation temperature with soda-pop bottle block ice

Welcome, good advise from these guys!!! Looks like they got you covered!