bottling and carbonating in a cold house

So I'm getting ready to bottle this weekened my first brew in over a year and i have a major space problem when it comes to bottle conditioning. I have no intention to go kegs right now so this is what i have to deal with.

The place where they should be going to rest is in the basement. My basement is officially 60 degrees and has been there for months. Also, looks like we have at least another 2, 3, or 4 weeks before it really starts to warm up around here. The beer is a wheat that will have been in the primary for two weeks so i really don't want it sit in there much longer.

I 'might' be able to let it sit on the kitchen floor for a week but that all depends on the wife and how much clutter she can take...

If i have to place it in the basement will it still carb at those temps? I know that it will take longer, maybe even a month. Now that I'm thinking about it I will probably press for a week upstairs just to give it a head start but it will have to be moved down after that.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks

It may not carb up at 60 degrees, depending on how active the yeast is at low temperatures. Nottingham should be able to, but most other ale strains go pretty dormant under 62 degrees.

Can you stick like 5 bottles in your closet or ontop of your fridge, or someplace else, instead of having all two cases in the basement? As the 5 bottles carb up, you could THEN put them in the basement to store them.

say i do a rotation, will the yeast in the bottles i bring upstairs reactivate after it warms up a bit?

monty67 said:

say i do a rotation, will the yeast in the bottles i bring upstairs reactivate after it warms up a bit?

Click to expand...

It should- just swirl the bottles a bit to rouse the yeast.

monty67 said:

say i do a rotation, will the yeast in the bottles i bring upstairs reactivate after it warms up a bit?

Click to expand...

Yes. Just turn it end over end to resuspend any yeast that may have fallen out in the cold. Then it should be fine!

cool. thanks folks.

I have a cold house.. and I had a bugger of a time trying to carb up my bottles.. they just wouldn't go. I bit the bullet and bought a temp controller, and now use my chest freezer with a 60w. light bulb in to keep it at 70 degrees. Perfect carbonation all the time.

Do you have a boiler room? If so what is the temperature. Mine is a constant 70* where as the rest of the basement is about 55*. The bottles and fermenting bucket live in there. When they are ready I just move them into the cold part of the basement and drink them like that. I seldom put them in the fridge.

I got past this same issue. SWMBO doesn't like when I have buckets, carboys, or cases of bottles sitting up stairs. The first time I did this it was with 2 cases of freshly bottle beer. The basement was too cold so I told her the beer had to sit in the dinning room for 10 days or it wouldn't be carbonated and then I just wasted lots of time. This eventually led me to put a beer in primary ferementation in the dinning room. Gradually I have gotten to where I am right now. 5 gallons of mead in a bucket in our kitchen (warmest room in the house because of wood stove) for the last 2 weeks. Also during that time I had 2 5 gallon carboys in the dinning room. Finally bottled them over the weekend. All this did not come without much complaining BUT and I emphasize BUT I used this as leverage in convincing her to allow me to KEG. So there will be a kegerator soon in our dinning room closet. She said I can run tap lines through the wall and mount a drip tray right in the dinning room. Not sure I want all that work yet so it is going to just sit in the closet for now.

monty67 said:

So I'm getting ready to bottle this weekened my first brew in over a year and i have a major space problem when it comes to bottle conditioning. I have no intention to go kegs right now so this is what i have to deal with.

The place where they should be going to rest is in the basement. My basement is officially 60 degrees and has been there for months. Also, looks like we have at least another 2, 3, or 4 weeks before it really starts to warm up around here. The beer is a wheat that will have been in the primary for two weeks so i really don't want it sit in there much longer.

I 'might' be able to let it sit on the kitchen floor for a week but that all depends on the wife and how much clutter she can take...

If i have to place it in the basement will it still carb at those temps? I know that it will take longer, maybe even a month. Now that I'm thinking about it I will probably press for a week upstairs just to give it a head start but it will have to be moved down after that.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks

Click to expand...

Saflager-189 is a cool temp bottlers dream come true. Your flavor profile is estabished. All you need is to carb. 189 is flavor neutral and a high floc. yeast that will do very well at your temp. range. Just sayin'