First time brewer with some questions

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

TL00Camaross

Member
Joined
Mar 16, 2010
Messages
5
Reaction score
0
Location
Des Moines Wa
Hi everyone, well I took the leap and started my first brew Sunday night and have a couple questions. I noticed Monday when I got home from work that the temp was at 73 degrees, and had plenty of activity from the airlock. Being a newbie I panicked thinking this was too warm and very carefully moved my 6.5 gal pail to the cooler downstairs. When I got home today the temp was down to about 61 degrees, but there was still some good activity about a bubble from the airlock every 3-4 seconds. After reading some more today I found out that the fermentation process actually causes heat, should have figured, so my first temp although not really controlled could have been alright? The recipe was for a blonde ale, how would this effect the overall taste of the beer? Being theres still activity at the colder temp I didnt damage the fermentation process did I?
 
Changing the temperature of your fermentation too quickly is risky business but it's still bubbling so that's good. A colder fermentation will take longer and will produce less esters, so at the very worst the flavor profile won't be as complex but I'm sure it will be fine. 61 is pretty cold though for ale fermentation. You might want to get that back up to 70 or so.
 
Yeah I didnt think it would drop that low, I have a space heater going in the large closet its in now to try and bump it up a bit.
 
Well best of luck. The best thing is to just let it go and forget about it for three weeks. Put it out of your mind. The more you tamper with it the more likely you are to **** it up.
 
I've definitely been there. I mean I still look at my fermenters daily and talk to them, encouraging the yeast to eat their fill and telling them just how happy they make me. Sometimes it feels like forever before it's done...
 
Changing the temperature of your fermentation too quickly is risky business but it's still bubbling so that's good. A colder fermentation will take longer and will produce less esters, so at the very worst the flavor profile won't be as complex but I'm sure it will be fine. 61 is pretty cold though for ale fermentation. You might want to get that back up to 70 or so.

agree with the changing temperature too quickly but i think you should be aiming for 60 as close as possible with the style of beer you are fermenting. keep in mind that if the temperature in the room is 70 your beer is probably more like 73-75 especially early in the stages of fermentation there is a lot of activity. Keep this in mind when checking the temp....i had a friend who kept his in his bathtub and he would always just check the water the fermenter was sitting in to get the temp little did he realize it was actually 3-4 degrees warmer than that inside the bucket. i personally like to keep the surrounding temperature of my fermenting vessel whether it be water or just open air at about 62-63 that way i know the beer isnt any warmer than 68 degrees...my two cents i believe there are a lot of posts with arguments for starting cold then going warm or starting warm then going cold ive always found a happy medium seems to provide the best of both worlds....and stability as well makes a huge difference. My first few batches i wasnt to keen on watching the temperature and im sure those beers changed 10-15 degrees from day to night
 
Personally I'd much rather ferment at 60 then 73.....I would have left it (well, depending on the yeast I guess), especially since it was still active. My brew closet stays a pretty constant 62 to 64 degrees during the winter and works perfectly.
 
Yeah temp does depend on the yeast you're using. I assumed belgian blonde but if it's a light hybrid blond and you're using an american ale yeast, well that's a different story and ambient temp should be as loxnar recommends.
 
Yeah temp does depend on the yeast you're using. I assumed belgian blonde but if it's a light hybrid blond and you're using an american ale yeast, well that's a different story and ambient temp should be as loxnar recommends.

<3

yea if you can stay between 62-72 during the whole process there isnt an ale yeast out there that would do you wrong....finding the sweet spots for the style of beer you are aiming for as well as the type of yeast you are using is the key and you will learn eventually

general rule of thumb i think is the cleaner/clearer the beer the colder (within ale yeast parameters that is) you want your fermentation temperature to be and darker generally a little warmer...like mightynintendo used as examples a belgian blonde tends to have a little more haze or cloudiness to it than say an american blonde would which you would naturally think of as being lighter in color and less "cloudiness" if any at all......like i said this is generally true but not all the time.
 
Thanks everyone for all the input and advice. I can't remember the name on the packet of yeast (the whole thing came as a kit). But i remember it being a product of Austria and yellow packet, so Im guessing a Belgian yeast. Its been sitting at a constant 68 right now. Can't wait for the next batch once I get all the bugs worked out!
 
I've definitely been there. I mean I still look at my fermenters daily and talk to them, encouraging the yeast to eat their fill and telling them just how happy they make me. Sometimes it feels like forever before it's done...

I'm glad someone else talks to their yeast.:D
 
Temperature stability is JUST SLIGHTLY less important than temperature itself. You want to be at a good temp, but you don't want to be at 72, then 61, then 70.

Also, I'm not sure if I caught if it was actually beer temperature or ambient temp of the room you were referring to. If the room is 61 and your beer is fermenting, then the beer itself is likely in the neighborhood of 65 or 66.
 
Temperature stability is JUST SLIGHTLY less important than temperature itself. You want to be at a good temp, but you don't want to be at 72, then 61, then 70.

Also, I'm not sure if I caught if it was actually beer temperature or ambient temp of the room you were referring to. If the room is 61 and your beer is fermenting, then the beer itself is likely in the neighborhood of 65 or 66.

Some good advice! :)

You really don't need all of these temperature swings. Just put that beer in an area that is close to the temperature you want to ferment at and let it slowly warm back up. You certainly don't need a space heater or anything like that.

I also don't agree so much with that comment on the fermenter being a lot warmer than water in a tub. Water is really good at pulling heat away from the fermenter, I can't imagine the temperature of the beer being much more than a degree warmer than the tub water even at the height of fermentation. Maybe if the water is in a room with a high ambient temp or the fermenter isn't submerged more than a few inches. If you can control the room temp and/or water in the tub temp you will also control the fermenter temp pretty closely and also keep things stable.

You may even want to let the beer get up to 70 after 5 or 6 days of fermentation if you are looking to dry the beer out some. I'm guessing you are using Safale S-33 which may finish at a pretty high gravity if you are at 60 degrees.
 
You may have produced some off flavors, but 74 F does not sounds too scary. Fermentation can produce as much as 100 BTU/hr (for 5 gallon beer). In a glass carboy or plastic ail pale or Better Bottle this will result in temperature rise of 4 - 8 F just sitting in a 70F room. However, submersed in water the heat transfer rate increases by a factor of 10 - the temperature inside the carboy will always be within 1 degree F of the temperature of the water. Bathtub trick actually worked better than Loxnar expected.
 
I was going to say "nay" to the space heater thing but thought I'd be coming on too strong.

Yeah I never placed the heater directly on it just let it circulate into the room, this is a large basement closet. The beer slowly rose back up 68/70 over a period of probably 12 hours, and has stayed constant their for two days now with the heater circulating warm air. Otherwise it would be sitting in the low 60s. I realize the large temp swing was bad, I just didnt intially think it was going to drop that low. Dumb mistake.
 
Back
Top