I have a ferment room that I am heating with a small electric heater. The heater is hooked up to one of the ebay aquarium temp controllers, nd the probe is touching the side of my fermenting carboy and is holding steady at 17 degrees celcius....I have ashelf in the room that I have 2 stir plates setting on. I have 2 starters going on them and the flasks are very warm to the touch. I put the probe against the side of one of the flasks and it climbed to 28 degrees rather quickly. The height difference is less than 3 feet so NO WAY the variation is simply temperature gradiant of the levels...I thought the plates were generting heat but they are not really hot to the touch...how is this happening? A couple of degrees because of the stir bar etc but not this much.EDITED... went back out and reasessed.. it is the stir plates getting warm.. how can I stop this from happening? and have I killed my yeast?
Can someone help me figure this out?
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I don't think 28C is going to kill any yeast.
Clearly the problem is not with your temperature control, but with the stirplate setup that everyone with a stirplate uses! Maybe it's not really a problem.
Clearly the problem is not with your temperature control, but with the stirplate setup that everyone with a stirplate uses! Maybe it's not really a problem.
First think of what the purpose of making a starter is. It's to step up the amount of yeast cells before you add the yeast to the wort since the process of doing so in the wort may give you off flavors as the yeast struggles to propagate fast enough. If the yeast is stressed by not having enough cells in the wort you get off flavors too.
Why do you use a stir plate when the yeast will propagate without one? Because using a stir plate encourages the propagation giving you more yeast cells. What makes the yeast propagate faster? Oxygen and temperature. Try fermenting your beer at 28 C. and see how fast it ferments. Ferment it cooler and your beer probably won't need a blowoff tube. By making your starter at the higher temperature plus stirring you get a fast rate of propagation which raises the temperature by itself, plus your stir plate warms it too. You don't worry about off flavors in the starter because you either decant it and just pitch the slurry or you pitch it all but it will be such a small percentage of the wort that the off flavors will be hidden in the larger quantity.
Why do you use a stir plate when the yeast will propagate without one? Because using a stir plate encourages the propagation giving you more yeast cells. What makes the yeast propagate faster? Oxygen and temperature. Try fermenting your beer at 28 C. and see how fast it ferments. Ferment it cooler and your beer probably won't need a blowoff tube. By making your starter at the higher temperature plus stirring you get a fast rate of propagation which raises the temperature by itself, plus your stir plate warms it too. You don't worry about off flavors in the starter because you either decant it and just pitch the slurry or you pitch it all but it will be such a small percentage of the wort that the off flavors will be hidden in the larger quantity.
Yeast will die at 140 F. which will be pretty uncomfortable to hold your hand against. If it feels like body temperature you should be OK.
Here's another thought to concider. The higher up the shelves are,the warmer they'll be. Hot air rises. So what feels comfortable at floor level to you will be warmer near the ceiling. Add to that the heat from the running stir plate,& you get high starter temps.
tedscastle
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I have just bottled my first batch and decided to keep it in a small bathroom with a temperature controlled space heater. Not trusting the heater's thermometer, I placed another thermometer in the room. The temperature reading was several degrees different on the floor( with the bottles) than on the counter. I was thinking that I might build a couple of shelves so that I could experiment with storing the bottles(or fermenter, yeast flask, etc.) at different temps within the same room.
That'd be a fine experiment! Be sure to take plenty of notes,& draw your conclusions for the rest of us. I love experimenting with the little things that'll give better brews with little or no cost involved. Tightens things up where they really need it on our brewing scale.
tedscastle
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Just took one reading from the floor and another from about 6 ft.. This is a small room, probably 10' x 6' with an 9' ceiling. The floor was 65 and it was 75 up 6 ft.. Plenty of variation for different purposes. I want to take it over completely, but SWMBO thinks it needs to remain a restroom.
JeepDiver
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OHIOSTEVE
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I think the problem is you are using funny numbers insead of American ones
lol.. yeah. the controller reads in Celcius.
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