browning

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Is a steady 72 deg to hot for my ales

Yooper

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If that is the ambient room temperature, then yes. As the beer ferments, fermentation produces heat and the temperature inside rises above ambient temperature. Most ales are best at 65-70 degrees (beer temperature, not ambient temperature!) depending on yeast strain.

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birvine

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A room around 60F is great if you have one. Otherwise try a swamp cooler which simply means placing your carboy fermenter into a pail of cool water and regulating the temp of the water with cool running water or ice.

B

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pelipen

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My ambient is 67F. Just putting the carboy into a container and filling half way up the side, I can maintain 63 with almost no effort. Swapping out miniature 10 oz frozen water bottles, I can drop below 60.
Once I learned this, there is almost no excuse to ferment that high unless i really want to, which is never so far.

NordeastBrewer77

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i've noticed pretty much the same thing. keep the house at 67-68, and the swamp coolers stay around 62-63 with no effort. water bottles and i can ferment pretty much any ale or lager.
check out this write up i did on fermenting ales nice and cool this way. here is how i control temps. really cheap and simple, and it works amazingly well.

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wailingguitar

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I agree with the swamp cooler, they are a great way to go and would be PERFECT in a situation like OP's... That being said, there are a few yeasts that do fine at the temps you mention, Wyeast 1332, 1010 and 1335 come to mind... if you look through the options, you can find a few yeasts that have temp ranges into the mid 70s

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