"Oh sh*t".
That was my exact statement last night when I realized I had accidentally cooled my fermenting beer to 35°. I brewed a rye IPA last Saturday and decided to check my gravity and just see how things were going yesterday afternoon. After a total of four days fermenting, I saw a nice, beautiful, thick, creamy krausen sitting on top - way too thick to try to grab a gravity reading. But since I knew I would have the lid to my fermenting chamber open for several minutes, I turned the thermostat off. Unknowingly, when I turned it back on at around 5pm, it had reset - from 67° to 35°. So at 9pm, when I was done bottling a different batch, I noticed the low temperature. I have several things in there, water bottles amongst them to help mitigate temperature fluctuations, and everything was cold. I left the lid to the chamber open last night with a small space heater and it was back to normal this morning at about 68°.
TL;DR: Day four of fermentation, beer got cooled to 35° within 4 hours. Back to 68° 8 hours later.
So, I guess we'll call this an experiment. I'm not really worried about off-flavors necessarily, just that it might take a few more days to attenuate fully. Which I can't really afford - its for a brew swap in mid-March.
That was my exact statement last night when I realized I had accidentally cooled my fermenting beer to 35°. I brewed a rye IPA last Saturday and decided to check my gravity and just see how things were going yesterday afternoon. After a total of four days fermenting, I saw a nice, beautiful, thick, creamy krausen sitting on top - way too thick to try to grab a gravity reading. But since I knew I would have the lid to my fermenting chamber open for several minutes, I turned the thermostat off. Unknowingly, when I turned it back on at around 5pm, it had reset - from 67° to 35°. So at 9pm, when I was done bottling a different batch, I noticed the low temperature. I have several things in there, water bottles amongst them to help mitigate temperature fluctuations, and everything was cold. I left the lid to the chamber open last night with a small space heater and it was back to normal this morning at about 68°.
TL;DR: Day four of fermentation, beer got cooled to 35° within 4 hours. Back to 68° 8 hours later.
So, I guess we'll call this an experiment. I'm not really worried about off-flavors necessarily, just that it might take a few more days to attenuate fully. Which I can't really afford - its for a brew swap in mid-March.