Delta in fermentation temp?

Hey all,
I am interested in heat generation caused by the act of fermentation. Is there a rule of thumb or charted data, as to how much heat/energy if any is actually produced during fermentation?

Lets say I had a perfectly controlled and stable environment, just say 70 deg f. for the hell of it, and my carboy and wort had been in this stable environment long enough to equalize to exactly 70 degs. I then pitch my yeast.... What type of delta in temp from my 70 degs. could I expect? I know there are a ton of variables that would affect this. But I am just looking for an approximate.

I am sure this would change depending on the type and style of yeast being pitched, so if needed lets just say:

WLP001 California Ale Yeast

Attenuation: 73-80%
Flocculation: Medium
Optimum Fermentation Temperature: 68-73°F
Alcohol Tolerance: High
Final Gravity: 2.8 P
Hours it takes to get to 50 percent attenuation: 40

Thanks all

I'm not positive on this, so maybe a more experience brewer can chime in... but it's my understanding that the beer raises in temperature by about 10 degrees F. I don't know how much this holds up though, because I've actually stuck a thermometer in my beer to monitor the liquid temp and it's only been a few degrees above the room temperature.

I think it might depend on how vigorous your yeast is though. Something like say...Wyeast 1056, would probably give you that 10 degrees. Something like California Ale that's been a little less vigorous for me in the past would probably only be around 5 degrees.

This graph is from Metabolic heat evolution of Saccharomyces cerevisiae grown under very-high-gravity conditions

It is an Industrial article but you might be able to get a general idea of the heat generated by a yeast culture during its anaerobic phase. If you just look at the low gravity controls in table 1 of the article with out urea @ 25-40ºC you can see that the energy released is ~21KJ/mol of glucose consumed when the gravity is 10g/L glucose.

May be this article can send you in the right direction?

I'll have to sticky this, be interesting for the future. Other things to keep in mind is how much of that heat is actually held by the beer which can be affected by vessel size and shape. You may want to look at the Trappist breweries because they do a lot of fermenting that warms naturally with time

The reason I am asking is that I have come up with rather unique and cheap method, on how to control ferm temps and before I build a prototype, I want to run all the math and see if its works on paper. So if anyone knows of any information the more accurate the better, it would be great! I have sent a email to White Labs asking these same questions so we shall see what they say!

thantos said:

The reason I am asking is that I have come up with rather unique and cheap method, on how to control ferm temps

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And you are just going to leave us hanging? Come on!

Parker36 said:

And you are just going to leave us hanging? Come on!

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LOL... All in good time! Let me make sure it works first! Then I will put it out there for all ! ! !