ICWiener
Well-Known Member
As I mentioned in the title of the thread, I have a space heater with a fan inside of my chest freezer ferm chamber. This time of year the freezer never actually kicks on, becuase my garage never gets above 60F. The heater itself is elevated. It sits on the hump that houses the compressor. probably 12-18 inches off the ground.
Anyways, I put a pale ale in there almost two weeks ago. Fairly close to the heater...maybe a foot away. Set the Ranco to 64 and let it go. 4 or 5 days ago I ramped it up to 66 to help the yeast finish out. I went into the garage last night to dry hop and I saw that the krausen ring (which is all the way up the carboy, since it blew off pretty hard) on one side of the carboy was significantly darker than the other. The heater had essentially cooked it. Ramping it up those two degrees made the heater run long enough to get a maillard reaction, which means the beer had to at least get pretty warm on that side of the carboy. I didn't pull a sample so I don't know if it affected the taste of the beer, but it smelled normal. I dry hopped and let it be. We'll see how it tastes in a few days when it's time to bottle.
I'm not too worried about it. It was a quick and dirty extract batch that I did for a friend, as a basic brewing lesson. I just wanted to know if anyone has had something similar happen, and how the beer turned out. In 10 years of brewing I've never done anything even remotely like this.
Anyways, I put a pale ale in there almost two weeks ago. Fairly close to the heater...maybe a foot away. Set the Ranco to 64 and let it go. 4 or 5 days ago I ramped it up to 66 to help the yeast finish out. I went into the garage last night to dry hop and I saw that the krausen ring (which is all the way up the carboy, since it blew off pretty hard) on one side of the carboy was significantly darker than the other. The heater had essentially cooked it. Ramping it up those two degrees made the heater run long enough to get a maillard reaction, which means the beer had to at least get pretty warm on that side of the carboy. I didn't pull a sample so I don't know if it affected the taste of the beer, but it smelled normal. I dry hopped and let it be. We'll see how it tastes in a few days when it's time to bottle.
I'm not too worried about it. It was a quick and dirty extract batch that I did for a friend, as a basic brewing lesson. I just wanted to know if anyone has had something similar happen, and how the beer turned out. In 10 years of brewing I've never done anything even remotely like this.