Wort Temperature

[425508h]

Hi all,

I’m very new to brewing cider and I have just made a batch this afternoon. It’s still fairly cold where I live so I bought a Mangrove Jack heat pad. Is this enough heat? It’s currently at 14 degrees Celsius and I’m using S04 yeast. It’s within the advised range but I’m concerned it might be a bit too low.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Chalkyt]

S04 is my go-to yeast. My outside cool store where I usually do a primary fermentation is typically 15C with a controlled max of 18C. The S04 usually shows signs of reasonably robust activity within 3 or 4 days and really gets going in a week.

I wouldn't bother with extra heating. My worst-case was when the cool store was 7C and I had to move the primary inside the house to 12C-14C to really get going. It then took three days for a thick surface foam to form and another seven days to fall from SG 1.055 to 1,030 at which point I racked to secondary then another four weeks to reach 1.010 where it was bottled then hot waterbath pasteurised after another week to stop any further fermentation. Carbonation was at 2 bar (about 30psi) for an estimated SG1.006 slightly sweet carbonated cider.

As a general rule Low (temperature) and Slow (fermentation) is the way to go.

 

[425508h]

Thanks for the reply. I woke up this morning and the temperature had risen to 22 degrees Celsius and the fermentation is starting to bubble away.