Keeping brewing Cool without a working fridge

[morgenmuffel]

Exactly that, My first brewing was done in the deep south of NZ and you don't tend to have to worry about keeping the brew cool when brewing, my heatpad saw quite a bit of action.

Anyway i am now mid North island and I am having issues keeping the beer cool when brewing, short of sticking buckets of ice around it are there anytips out there.

I do have a dead fridge, which like all fridges is well insulated and i use it in winter as the temp stays fairly consistent inside.

[Guru]

I recently had to do this as my fermenting fridge (with STC1000) spat the dummy. I just kept the fermenter in the dead fridge and put blocks of ice around it. It seemed to do the trick reasonably well. I don't think this would work in summer here though. So apart from the blocks of ice trick I can't think of much else.

Fortunately we just bought a new fridge for the house, so I have inherited the old house fridge, hooray.

[SaazGorilla]

I've been using a Dead fridge for over a year. I usually put two 2-litre ice bricks (just old plastic juice bottles) in there as soon as the fermenter is sealed and ready to be put in so as to get the temperature down to brewing temps faster. Once the beer is down to temperature I only need one 2-litre brick in there changed either once or twice a day - some days it doesn't need an ice brick at all -depends on the weather.

I usually only brew between April and October (but I'm putting down a wheat beer today thanks to cool weather forecast for the next week), and I find I can even get Lagers down to temperature in the cooler months using the above method. Brewing in summer would be possible if: a) you had at least two ice-bricks in there all the time; b) you were around enough to change them when needed; c) your dead fridge was kept somewhere in the house that doesn't get so hot.