homebrewandbeer.com

I'm in outback Aus, which means houses with no insulation and very hot temperatures. Lucky for us its mostly dry heat so evaporation cooling can keep things cool enough.

I've had a thought about how to make the cooling with a baisin of water and Frozen PET bottles better. If you make a brine solution [salt and water] and freeze it in the bottles, you'll be able to cool the water dramatically, because brine freezes at much lower temperatures than freshwater.

I haven't seen anyone mentioning this before. Is it a stupid idea? Next time its 45 degrees [celcius] I'm going to give it a go.

The cooling force of frozen water comes primarily from the phase change (from solid to liquid). Adding salt to the water inside the bottles will make no change to this whatsoever. If you add salt to the liquid water in your basin it will be able to hold a lower temperature while remaining a liquid, which is why people do it in eskies so that they can cool their beer to below 0°C. Some burk did that at an event where I was supplying homebrewed beer, and it slaughtered my poor ales' flavour profile. I mean come on, Ale at -1°C? You can't taste anything at that temp. Hmm... I'm OT aren't i?

Bytha wrote: because brine freezes at much lower temperatures than freshwater.

I haven't seen anyone mentioning this before. Is it a stupid idea? Next time its 45 degrees [celcius] I'm going to give it a go.

I actually tested that on Wednesday this week.

The fermenter (just filled with water) was in the laundry sink with 1 x 2 Litre frozen Bottle and 1 x 1.5 Litre bottle also frozen. I called my wife to check on it at lunchtime. It was very hot outside and the temp on the fermenter was at 23 degrees. I think I'll have to add more Frozen bottles as it is waaaaaay to hot for me to do a lager at the moment.

Cheers

Boonie