Fermentation too hot

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GreenEnvy22

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Hi all,
I have 50L of Muscat going. This is from grapes in our backyard.
I pressed on Saturday, added yeast sunday afternoon. This was put into a 20 gallon Brute bin with a t-shirt stretched over top.
Monday just a light bit of foaming.
Today in the morning the foam had risen all the way up and touched the t-shirt. Way too much foam to check the SG.
I swapped the t-shirt for the brute lid and put some weight on it to keep bugs out.
Tonight I checked and still really foamy, but not as high as before. I still can't check SG, but did test temperature. It's at 28.5 C, so like 83 F.
I'm worried this is too hot. What's my best way to cool this down? Usually I ferment in 7 gallon pails but this thing is too big and heavy to lift.

Yeast was L1B-1122, original SG was 1080.

Interestingly the foam is like when you get an espresso, can make patterns in it. See photo :)

20170919_175912.jpg
 
I am not sure what the problem is. Let it slow down in a few days and check the SG. It is not necessary to check every day. It will be obvious when fermentation is nearly done. The best way to check SG is to remove a sample with a wine thief and a cylinder, there will be less foam.
 
As a home winemaker, I have used a couple of fairly low tech methods to cool the must in your situation.

1)The very simplest is to use bottle bombs which are frozen jugs of water. Fill very clean plastic jugs (can even use freezer bags if you feel really lucky or have no plastic jugs) filled about 3/4 full and frozen solid in your coldest freezer. Pull them out, spritz with kmeta sanitizer if desired and drop one or two in the fermenter. Stir it around now and then. The ice will be melted in two or three hours and you can pull them out, wash the jugs, dry and refreeze for the next go. We like heavy plastic juice containers, 1 to 2 quarts each.

2) Slightly higher tech, get a little fountain or pond pump-- I used the one off my tile saw -- and some food grade tubing -- 20 or 30 feet is not too much. Also a fairly large tub or bucket to place next to your fermenter. Sanitize the outside of the tubing. Connect it to the pump to one end. Drop most of the coiled tubing into your fermenter, bringing the open end out and securing it into the tub. Put quite a bit of water and ice in tub. Turn pump on and it circulates ice water through all those coils in your fermenter, with pretty much zero chance any of the water can possibly get into your wine. But do fasten the end of the tubing securely into the water tub. And add more ice as needed to keep the water cold.

3) The very best, most elegant way we've found to cool a too hot fermentation is to either plan ahead or go back in time and take out some of your must, put it in freezer bags, freeze solid in your coldest feeezer. Then when your must is getting too hot, just take a bag out and dump a big old must ice cube into your fermenter. Nothing to take out later and no risk of contamination.

Good luck. Lovely must. I'll bet it smells wonderful. Even if you can't rig anything to cool it, it will settle down in a couple of days and probably not much harm done.
 
Thanks for the tips. I think for next year I'll do the tubing route with a pump.
For now temp has dropped down to about 27 and foaming is dying down. I was able to get a rough SG level of about 1.002 so fermentation almost done.
 
I know others here use the bottle bomb method. I plan to try for the first time myself this year with a Pinot Noir.
 

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