Cool Brewing Jacket Question

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chieftain

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I picked up a Cool Brewing Jacket this weekend, and plan to use it tonight for a brew in progress. I intend to add one frozen 2L to keep the temp around 68, but my question is do I add that right away, or wait for fermentation to kick off? My concern is that I might lower the temp too far and miss my target fermentation temp if I add it right away before the yeast start doing their thing and raising the temperature of the wort.

thanks
 
I find that the yeast put out a lot of heat during the lag phase, but have never read anything that confirms this is normal. So I can only give you this one data point. I hope others will post here. If so, they likely won't agree with my findings. If you don't get answers, you'll just have to make your own judgement and see how it turns out. I suggest keeping good notes so you'll know what to do next time.
 
I normally throw 1 frozen 2 liter in there right after pitching and sealing it up. Pitch around 68 degress, so even if it chills to the max it would still be greater than 62 with just the 1 bottle in there. I normally use WLP001 yeast and this works out well.
 
I find that the yeast put out a lot of heat during the lag phase, but have never read anything that confirms this is normal. So I can only give you this one data point. I hope others will post here. If so, they likely won't agree with my findings. If you don't get answers, you'll just have to make your own judgement and see how it turns out. I suggest keeping good notes so you'll know what to do next time.

I normally throw 1 frozen 2 liter in there right after pitching and sealing it up. Pitch around 68 degress, so even if it chills to the max it would still be greater than 62 with just the 1 bottle in there. I normally use WLP001 yeast and this works out well.

Thanks to both who responded. I ended up adding a frozen 2 liter right off the bat, which was a good call. Fermenter was bubbling away the next morning at 68 degrees. I had to mix and match my frozen bottles a bit to get the temps right as the fermentation proceeded, but overall I was really impressed with the cool brewing cooler.
 
Does anyone think it would be possible to get the temps down into the 50s for lager yeast?

Absolutely. I just bottled an IPL, which entailed 3 weeks of fermentation around 50-54. This jacket worked great, with typically 3-4 2 gallon jugs in a 72 degree room .
 
Does anyone think it would be possible to get the temps down into the 50s for lager yeast?

One caution - I tried fermenting at around 58F a while back. This was in a swamp cooler - not the cool brewing jacket. The cooler temp of the fermenter caused condensation to form. I was using a fermometer, and the condensation ruined it - it never worked after that. The fermometers are water resistant, not water proof.

Since my experience was with a swamp cooler, I can't say whether the jacket would have the same problem. Maybe some others have tried it with at low temps with the jacket and a fermometer.
 
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