We revisit a result of Hairer-Shen on polymer-type approximations for the stochastic heat equation with a multiplicative noise (SHE) in $d=1$. We consider a general class of polymer models with strongly mixing environment in space and time, and we prove convergence to the Itô solution of the SHE (modulo shear). The environment is not assumed to be Gaussian, nor is it assumed to be white-in-time. Instead of using regularity structures or paracontrolled products, we rely on simpler moment-based characterizations of the SHE to prove the convergence. However, the price to pay is that our topology of convergence is weak.