Fermentation Temps: poor college student

I'm bottle conditioning my first batch of beer and my second batch is in the primary right now. The first one is a Wheat Beer and the second an Irish Red.

For both of the beers the recipe says to ferment between 68-72 F. However, I come and go from the apartment all day so when I'm not there I generally turn the AC off, and when I come back i turn it back on- so the temp in my appt. fluctuates between 70 and 78.

1) How important is having a consistent tempurature during primary/secondary fermentation and bottle conditioning?

2) And is it OK to ferment/bottle condition at 75 instead of the 68-72 range? (especially since it saves $$)

Those are excellent bottle conditiong temps but not very good for fermenting clean beer. Try out a swamp cooler and some ice bottles. You can easy get it down another 10 degrees.

the temperature is very important to your brew, every yeast prefers different temps...if fermented at different temps, they produce undesirable off-flavors and could be the difference in an excellent brew and an alright brew...as far as bottle conditioning, yes it is more acceptable to bottle condition at 75, that is actually the temp i was told originally by some people on this forum that knew what they were talking about...they said just do it at room temperature, which i took to mean 70-75.

By the way, welcome to the forums!!!

Unless you are making beer styles that prefer temps in the 70s, you're likely going to find off-flavors in your beers when they ferment too warm. There are various methods of keeping your fermenter cool -- or at least more consistent. Most of them involve variations of putting your fermenter in a tub of water and then adding bottles of frozen water or blowing a fan over the water. The temperature will equalize between the water in the tub and the fermenter, and the additional liquid volume will react more slowly to temperature changes, so even without the ice or fan it will get warm during the day slower than just the fermenter by itself. It doesn't need to be a fancy set up; just a trash can or rubbermaid tub or bathtub will work.

For bottle conditioning, those temps are ok.

I could try to get a cooler and use some ice packs. Should I put the primary and secondary fermenters both in the cooler?

Glad to hear that I can still bottle condition in the appt, one less thing to worry about.

this is what I've done to combat temperature control and it seems to work pretty well. I can consistantly keep a brew in the 60* range with this set up.



plus it keeps it totally shielded from light.

Here's Revvy's with tee shirts,

And my old one with only frozen 2L bottles.

+1 on the swamp cooler method. I use one of those big party tubs with the rope handles you can get a Wally World or elsewhere for under 10 bucks this time of year. Fermenter goes in the tub, water goes in the tub around the fermenter. Then I just swap out frozen pop bottles 2 or 3 times a day to keep it cool through the heat of the day. Works great!

Mine is just a 30 gallon plastic tote and maybe 6 inches of water and a tshirt pulled over the fermenter. I rotate out frozen 1/2 gallon jugs. Keeping 2 in the freezer and 1 in the tub. I also toss in some regular ice and some big cubes I freeze in those pint sized plastic food containers. It works remarkably well and I'm maintaining 64 degrees on my basement floor.

It's about 90 outside. 82.7 on the first floor. In the basement where my bottles condition it's 73, and a few feet away from that in the swamp cooler it's 64.

Wow you have a lot of buckets goin on Conroe. I can only aspire to one day have just as many primary fermenters.

This is even better.

A chest freezer with a temp controller. Some find fridges/freezer on cregslist cheap (not me.) This cost me about $260 total. It's much easier than freezing watter bottles.

Here is my slightly modified mini fridge. I got it for free.


The thing is old but works great. I don't have a controller for it. I use it for crash cooling. I have to be careful with it. It will freeze in there.

Nice. Living with the girlfriend for the rest of the summer, then back into the dorms, so my space is severely limited (probably to a closet...to keep the brewing on the DL from campus security). I'll have to make due with a simple cooler for now.

Thanks for the advice guys!

I used the party tub with rope handles and my swamp cooler didn't stay at 65 for more than an hour. I have the A/C on all the time too. It's about 80% humidity and in upper 80s here in WI. I heard that swamp coolers aren't good in higher humidity but I dont know what it is where you are. I had to switch out frozen bottles about three times a day. The temps quickly went upward to 75 at some points and I can definately taste banana in my weiss. I'm building a mother of fermentation chiller for about 30 bucks. the son of fermentation chiller would easily fit in a closet and besides the foam board.. you can find the parts for free if you take the time to look like i did.

I am in HI so I am always fighting the temp battle. And my little apartment does not allow for a big set up. So I got a 20 gallon trash can from home depot ($12) and fill 'er up with water and frozen ice bottles. During the peak heat months, assuming you like Belgian's, brew those. They are much more tolerant.

Metal: Did you get your wort down to 65 before you pitched? Not sure why yours climbed. I'm doing the same thing, no t-shirt so I'm not relying on evaporation to cool, just the water and water bottles. Last summer it was over 100 degrees and I was able to keep beer under 70 that way.

it was at around 70. would that have caused it to jump so quickly?

have you heard anything about humidity causing the swamp cooler to fail? I wish I could remember where I saw that.. on the boards somewhere, but there is a lot of false and contradicting statements and opinions for everything. lol

The warmer your beer is at pitching, the quicker the ferment will get started. Once it starts, if it's still warm it'll get warmer faster making it hard for any cooling you do to keep up. That could easily have been your issue.

If you use a t-shirt or other cloth over your fermenter in the tub of water, then you're using evaporation to cool the beer. The higher the humidity the slower the water will evaporate from the t-shirt and the less cooling effect you'll get. Same reason you feel hotter when the humidity is higher, because the sweat doesn't evaporate off your body as fast.

I'm glad I stumbled upon this topic. I'm having a similar temperature problem, but I've been fermenting for 4 days already. Is it too late to take advantage of one of these cooling setups?

UnderPressure:
Yes and no. It never hurts to control temperatures but the most important time, by far, is when the initial fermentation is happening. For the most part, this is done within 5 days or so. You can control temperatures after that, and it's certainly going to help out, but the biggest impact happens in that first window when the yeast are going crazy.

I'm too lazy to try and use my swamp cooler to control my beer when it's in the secondary, and I keep my bottles at room temperature (~73-ish) but I am very particular about my primary. My first couple of batches took a longer time to condition out to decent drinkability because I was letting the yeast take the temperature up into the mid-high 70s. Just getting a big rubbermaid tub swamp cooler going has creates huge improvements in my more recent batches; much cleaner flavour, fewer esters, and overall much better beer. Using the plastic tub method is a bit of a PITA, but it only lasts for that first week. (Obviously: a small fridge with a temperature control is ideal, but OP probably doesn't have the resources and definitely doesn't have the space for that to make sense).