Does anyone brew during a cold winter?
 

Hi Guys,

Where I am we are going through some very cold weather (it was -3c this morning) and the house is quite cold.

I just measured the temp of my latest all grain and it's at 17c.

This is too cold for a good fermentation?

Should I invest in some way of keeping the liquid warm? My local HB shop sells warming jackets for the FV.

It would really depend on the yeast you are using, I just brewed a cream ale with nottingham yeast at 56F which is 13.333C and it turned out great, really clean. Check the yeast website for the fermenting temp range.

Ive tried to build my supply up, because I dont feel like freezing my butt off this winter.

Boy I wish durning the winter we get a couple days in a row above -3*c, we had a 2-3week stretch were it didnt get above -13*c and our low was around -29*c the whole time. But Im going to be brewing some lagers since my basement will stay in the low 50's

Winter is when I brew lagers. Close off the heat duct to the back bedroom and it will maintain between 45* and 50* F.

There are two cheap things you can do to maintain ale temps:

Strap a heating pad to the side of the carboy.

I put my carboy in a larger bucket of water. I then put an aquarium thermometer in the bucket.

both ale and lager yeast will work at the temperature, but slowly. Likely Ale would work better. It would easy to bring temperature down in an outside wall closet, or up next to a heat duct.

Or pitch both and see what happens.

I checked my yeast and it does say that it needs to be between 20c and 24c so in this case I think I need to bring the temperature of the liquid up.

Perhaps the heating pad will be a good move as suggested.

I think 20C is actually on the high end of most ale yeast strain's fermentation temperatures. If yours says 20-24 is optimum, I would question the type of yeast you're using. If it's Coopers or Munton's, I'd throw it away and get a good brand of quality yeast.

Yooper, that is some serious restraint for not scolding this "islander" for claiming -3C is a "cold winter", LOL

Haha- it's actually quite warm here lately. It was up to -8C today, and only snowed a few inches. I'd be happy if we got up to -3C again before March!