Here in Texas it's averaging 103 after a rather mild start to summer it's come on strong. I've got a oatmeal stout in the fermenter that's sitting in a large bucket that I'm adding ice water and cold packs to and it's all I can do to keep it under 78. Yes,Mathis my first batch to brew myself and luckily it's an ale. So what is this swamp cooler that is mentioned?
Basically you use a container to place your fermentor in. Then fill with water and bottles of Ice, lastly cover the fermentor with a tee-shirt. Basically it's evaporative cooling. I also live in Texas, Orange Grove, it's been hot here aswell. I use a Coleman cooler I modified to fit my fermentor in. I added a wooden collar on the lid so I could close it, I also cut a hole so I could see the airlock and monitor the activity. I fill with water and Ice bottles and can maintain temps fairly well as long as I keep an eye on daily.
Sounds like you're using one. I'm assuming you put your fermenter in the least warm part of your place. Try a Google image search of "Swamp Cooler" and you might get some ideas on how to tweak yours to make it more efficient. Unfortunately, you're in a damn hot place. I'm using a swamp cooler now too. It's in my basement with a wet sweatshirt wrapped around it. I have a rotation of plastic iced water bottles going. It keeps me busy but it's been holding my hefeweizen in the 62F - 65F range. I'm not dealing with your 100F temps though. I'm around 75F - 90F and my basement's around 70F. If you can, try to get a bunch of frozen water bottles added to your rotation (maybe for future reference anyway). And good luck! Sounds like you're in a tough spot.
Other options for cooling down fermentations: Cool Brewing: http://www.cool-brewing.com/ If you are a DIY kind of person you can build a Son of Fermentation Chiller: http://home.roadrunner.com/~brewbeer/chiller/chiller.PDF I built the Son of Fermentation Chiller and it maintains a pre-set fermentation temperature very well. Cheers!
A swamp cooler will be more effective in a dry climate than a humid one. Not to be discouraging, but expect better results in El Paso than Houston. Texas-Refugee
Make a "jacketed fermenter" with a self priming pump, differential temp controller and a Sparklets water dispenser.
I use the swamp cooler method with ice but don't rely on evaporation. I fill the larger bucket with enough water to reach the 5gal line in hopes that my beer will uniformly be the same temp inside as the outside water.
If I understand your setup correctly, your water is basically serving as the ambient temperature environment. If so, the wort/beer won't be the same temperature as the water during the most active fermentation.
Your understanding is correct. I shoot for maintaining 61-63f for the first few days to account for the additional heat generated by fermentation and gradually let it come up over the course of 2 weeks to sit at 70ish until ready to be packaged. I fill the bucket to the beer line to avoid having any portion of the beer exposed to the ambient air temp and thus having to be cooled from the bottom up. The extra 10 or so gallons of water also helps minimize the hot/cold temp fluctuations of having to add all the necessary ice at once (ie before work) to maintain a suitable temp during the day when nobody is home.
I lived in Southern AZ for several years with an evaporative cooler as my only respite from the heat. If humidity is too high, you'll only be able to drop maybe 10-15 degrees. I hated my swamp cooler. Basically worthless.
