Room temperature fluctuations
 

I just started my first batch (brown ale) yesterday and have it in an Ale Pail for primary fermentation.

The problem is that I live in an adobe (earthen bricks) house in New Mexico that is heated by passive solar and a wood stove. The house works great but has daily temperature fluctuations of up to 20 degrees. This time of year the outside temp range is 20s in the early morning to 60s in the afternoon. The temp inside the house ranges from 55 in the morning to 75 in the afternoon. In the summer the range is 70s to 100s outside and 60s to 80s inside. I use an evaporative cooler in the summer.

I have the fermenter in the most temperature stable room in the house but for the first day that room temp ranged from 63 to 74. I don't have a thermometer in or on the fermenter so I don't know how that is doing inside. I guess I will need to do that.

Is this going to be a problem? I do have bubbles through the airlock this morning after 18 hours at the rate of about one every 3 seconds at 63 degrees F.

Sounds like it's working just fine. The only thing I would suggest is to maybe find an old sleeping bag and place the carboy in it. The sleeping bag will help to stabilize the temperature a little better.

I wouldn't worry about it too much yet, get the rest of your process down before you start getting all anal about ferm temps as long as they aren't going crazy. Just remember that large amounts of liquid will take longer to change temperature (think of a swimming pool on a hot summer day, then a cool night, pretty much the same) Definitely get a little thermometer for your fermenting vessel (a stick on aquarium one will work). You can also put your bucket in a tub of water which you can control with ice/hot water or get a heat belt

^+1

If it is sitting in a big tub of water, even if you don't try to adjust with hot or cold water, it still has more thermal mass, which regulates the temps even more.

my 15' pool varies 10 F during the day. Very little can be done passively (cheaply). Not critical though, mate.

Thermal mass is what makes an adobe home work so well. The adobe walls create thermal mass and hold the heat during the night and/or the cool during the day.

I don't really have the space to put it into a water bath but I will try a thermal blanket and get a thermometer to monitor the internal temp.

I have my fermenter in a water bath in an igloo cooler right now, to help slow any temperature changes. You wouldn't need much room- My cooler is not much bigger than the bucket alone.

A blanket would help, though!