New to brewing - Temp issues

Hi guys,

I recently bought one of those coppertun kits and fired it up on Tuesday afternoon.
I have encountered a couple of issues.

First off, being summer and all, the temperature on the fermenter ran at 30 degrees Celsius on Wednesday afternoon.
It was still bubbling round 5am on Thursday morning but stopped after 6am (temp at 26 Celsius) and never started up again.

I tasted the brew, it is very light.
Now the question is,
1) are there still active yeast left in the drum?
2) will the brew be fine to bottle?
3) should I let it sit like that for another week or so?
4) if I do bottle it, will it carbonate??? very worried about this
5) keep the bottled beer in a fridge or outside?

I'm not to worried about this batch (seeing as it is a first try and a learning curve), but it would be nice getting something out of this batch.

On the next batch I'm thinking of placing the bin in a tub of water to help regulate the temperature, do you think this will work?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes, yeast go through 3 phases and in your case they have completed only 2. the third phase takes the longest as the easy work was done in the second phase and now the yeast need to break down intermediate compounds created in the second phase and clean up off flavors. This often takes more than a week, sometimes 2 weeks depending on the temperature of the beer while fermenting. Yours fermented pretty warm so it might take even more than 2 more weeks.
4. Yes, if you give the yeast something to work with such as priming sugar, carbonation drops, or DME.
5. The beer should be kept at the same temperature as when it was actively fermenting to get carbonation and maturity. This could take up to 3 weeks for the carbonation and longer for maturity depending on the darkness/alcohol level of the beer. Then it should be chilled for at least 24 hours prior to drinking with longer being better if you have the space for it.

For your next batch you should work to keep the fermenting beer cooler as you'll like the beer better in the end. Swamp coolers work pretty well for the cost. Set your fermenter in a tub of water and add ice chunks to keep the fermenting beer cool. Drape a cloth over the fermenter and let water wick up the cloth and evaporate for cooling, adding a fan to increase the cooling.

Here's some information on how the yeast cycle works by Dr. Chris White of White Labs, a major supplier of liquid yeast for brewing.
http://www.brewgeeks.com/the-life-cycle-of-yeast.html

Shot, thanks for all the insight.

one more question, when is the best time to pitch the finnigs

I've been letting my beers sit in the primary fermenter for about 3 weeks and then bottling. With a little care when bottling so I don't get a bunch of yeast stirred up from the fermenter, by the time the beer is carbonated and matured a bit the beer turns out clear so I never use fining agents. If you do use them you have to tell us what you are using because when to pitch depends on what you use.

It is a coppertun packet of finnigs.

I bottled 1 bottle with a carbonation drop on thursday evening and placed it in the fridge, tasted it last night, had a lot of bubbles but no head and was very sweet. It also had a white ring in the bottem. I take it that it was probably casued by the drop and it is also responsible for the sweetness?
The can I got with the kid was a pilsner blonde, don't know what it is supposed to taste like.

Tehan said:

It is a coppertun packet of finnigs.

I bottled 1 bottle with a carbonation drop on thursday evening and placed it in the fridge, tasted it last night, had a lot of bubbles but no head and was very sweet. It also had a white ring in the bottem. I take it that it was probably casued by the drop and it is also responsible for the sweetness?
The can I got with the kid was a pilsner blonde, don't know what it is supposed to taste like.

Click to expand...

Yeast take time to eat the carbonating sugars and longer yet for the head forming compounds to get together. At least part of the sweetness was from the priming sugar. Give your beer another 2 weeks and it will be different.