Good Recipes for Cool Basement

I'm about to brew my third batch ever - I do partial mash 5-gallon batche. This time of year, my basement storage area usually stays in the mid 50's to very low 60's. What type of beer (or more specifically, yeast) works well in these temperatures. I don't have the fridge space or temp control for lagering. Thanks.

My basement is the same temp, and you can do ales and lagers by selecting the right yeast.

I like S-04, and Pacman for Ales as they can tolerate the lower temps.. makes a really clean beer! Kolsch yeast also works nicely at these temps to make a pseudo lager. You can also make a little swamp cooler and by swapping a frozen 2 litre pop bottle out every 12 hours, can easily get the temp down to 50.

Awesome! I have some S-04 on hand but was doubting the listed lower temperature range. Thanks!

1007 german ale yeast goes into the mid to upper 50's - Alt.
Kolsch yeast - for a kolsch or a "mocktoberfest"
San francisco lager yeast for a steam beer.

+1 to the above but also, if you want to focus on ales that like the low to mid 60s you can go the swamp cooler route but instead of adding ice bottles place a small aquarium heater in the water to bump up the temp a bit or get a temp controller and a heater wrap for the vessel to maintain the desired temperature.

Sounds like the perfect temp range to make a Scottish Ale. I've been able to ferment WLP001 in the high 50's/low 60s as well as WLP002. Wyeast 1728 is listed at 55-75F where WLP028 is rated to low 60s (website says not less then 62F).

Scottish Ales are really simple to make and there are several approaches - if you're interested I can post a recipe or two.

Braufessor said:

1007 german ale yeast goes into the mid to upper 50's - Alt.
Kolsch yeast - for a kolsch or a "mocktoberfest"
San francisco lager yeast for a steam beer.

Click to expand...

I have a batch with this yeast going in my garage (about 55F) and it's doing well. Seems to tolerate cooler temps nicely.

Braufessor said:

1007 german ale yeast goes into the mid to upper 50's - Alt.
Kolsch yeast - for a kolsch or a "mocktoberfest"
San francisco lager yeast for a steam beer.

Click to expand...

+ 1 I wait until this time of year specificaly to use my basement and cooler temps for the three above listed styles.

I'm going to try a mocktoberfest using Wyeast 2124 Bohemian Lager. Do I have to worry about not lagering with this yeast?

Cal Common with the San Fran lager yeast

*braufessor beat me to it

wintermute2 said:

This time of year, my basement storage area usually stays in the mid 50's to very low 60's.

Click to expand...

This is perfect temp for many recipes as others have mentioned. Also, your basement probably maintains different temps in different areas. I get a 2-3 degree F differential between the middle of the basement and near the outer wall. Also about 2 degrees difference between the floor and sitting on one of my work benches.

Place a couple thermometers in different areas of your basement and find the place with the temp closest to what your yeast likes.

Sorry for all the questions, I'm new to this. So, I'm planning on making a mocktoberfest in the coldest part of the basement (55 degrees on average) using Wyeast Bohemian Lager 2124. Without using a starter (pitching the packet into my final volume of 5 gallons of wort), how many smack packs would I need for the proper pitching rate?

wintermute2 said:

Sorry for all the questions, I'm new to this. So, I'm planning on making a mocktoberfest in the coldest part of the basement (55 degrees on average) using Wyeast Bohemian Lager 2124. Without using a starter (pitching the packet into my final volume of 5 gallons of wort), how many smack packs would I need for the proper pitching rate?

Click to expand...

Www.malty.com or Www.yeastcalc.com

Plug in the numbers and it will tell you what you need