What Temp Is To Cold To Ferment Ale?

my first brew i had trouble keeping the temp cool enough. With the waether i could only get it down to 68 in a water bath .with a frozen 2 liter soda bottle. Now the room I am fermenting in, is only 5 degrees cooler. So I did the same water bath, but now my fermenter is 54 deg. its only been fermenting for 2 days and the airlock is stil bubbling. i dont want to warm it up to fast. will this hurt the taste of my ale

It should be fine. The real answer to your question is that each yeast is different and has different temperature tolerances.

If you're fermenting in the 50s that's pretty low for an ale yeast, but if it's going along nicely, don't disturb it. You'll get a nice ale out of it. The higher the temp, generally the more fruity esthers/ higher alcohol flavors you'll get.

But with the nice low fermentation temp you have going, you should have a great ale on your hands. That may be worth noting which yeast you used and use that in the future.

Just as a point of example to illustrate ... if the yeast you're using is working well at 54, that same yeast might not like it at 70.

cheers

~r~

What yeast strain are you using? 54 is too cold for just about any ale yeast out there. You will have very slow fermentation and low attenuation, which will result in a sweeter beer than intended. Try to slowly raise the temp to the low to mid 60's, which speed things up and increase attenuation. Taking it out of the water bath would be a good start.