Ferment temps - facts vs. myths please..

[Netflyer]

I share Yooper's experience with Cooper's kits and have had two bad experiences with them. I think my beer ferments between 65-70. When I chill my beer I take it down to 65-67 and pitch my correct sized starter of yeast, or my dry yeast package(s) as per pitching rate calculators relative to the original gravity of my brew. You need to use enough yeast and control your temperature so that the yeast complete the job. I use plastic ale pale fermenters in my basement which is at 68 ambient. When I put my beer up to ferment the strip thermometer reads 65-67. If it is warmer in the room (late summer for me my basement finally gets to 70-72) I use the swamp cooler method to bring it down to the mid 60's again. Temperature is important but depending upon the yeast you have a 'workable' range between 60-72 depending on the yeast. If you have a yeast that has a range of say 62-72 you can get in on the low end of that, say 63-65 and be pretty sure with heat of fermentation added you will still remain in the good range.

All that said, if you want better beer throw the kit away, buy the grain, crush the grain, soak the grain, draw the wort, taste the wort, it's your wort now.

One more thing - everyone is here trying to help you. No one is trying to trick you. Read through the posts and take the advice of excellent brewers and you will improve.

 

[TheCookieMonster]

Wow I guess there's a whole bunch of people brewing wrong.

I can say for sure without a doubt that my sticker has never, ever read not even more than 1 degree more than ambient temps. That's the only thing I can say for certain.

You guys have a LOT of experience so know more than me. Jamil said the stickers were accurate to 0.5 of wort temps. So now I'm confused.

Up where I live it's it's 11pm and 54 degrees outside. Are you suggesting that I brew an English Ale and let it ferment out in the garage for best results.

If you say yes, I WILL actually do it.

 

[SwampassJ]

Really now? No one else has picked up on him being a troll? He posts questions and then when he dislikes the answer he insults people and or their methods.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/imported-english-ale-vs-local-ale-english-blows-away-local-166435/

 

[Nugent]

A troll is a member of a race of fearsome creatures from Norse mythology (or in this case from Toronto :cross.

Don't want to listen to experience? Go rogue then.

 

[TheCookieMonster]

I love how someone trying to find answers on a forum is considered a troll.

Later on through my own research I found the truth of why the English ales taste better than local ales from our craft brewers. I think that UK based Maris Otter is going to taste a lot better than our Canadian 2 row. That is accepted as a fact. Even Jamil says that he only uses the import Maris for most of his stuff.

Basically I'm being told that I have to ferment outside in the cold becuase it will jump up 10 degrees. Then on his thumbnail I see it fermenting indoors and wrapped up. Someone who brews 250 batches will not tell me his fermentation temp on his stickers or how much I should be expecting the temps to rise.

I've rarely seen anyone videos where they are fermenting (a non lager) in a fridge.

So before I go out and spend $500 on a fridge or start putting my carboys out in the cold, I'm really trying to find out what the internal/ambeint temps are supposed to be.

This isn't trolling. This is someone trying to ask a question and not getting answers so I'll ask elsewhere.

Thanks to whoever gave me the URL regarding the accuracy of the stickers. That was something factual and a step forward in my knowledge

 

[ChshreCat]

No, people who aren't listening to answers and then start being insulting instead are trolls. Plenty of folks on here come for answers and don't troll.

I'm done feeding the troll as well.

 

[JefeTheVol]

I love how someone trying to find answers on a forum is considered a troll.

Later on through my own research I found the truth of why the English ales taste better than local ales from our craft brewers. I think that UK based Maris Otter is going to taste a lot better than our Canadian 2 row. That is accepted as a fact. Even Jamil says that he only uses the import Maris for most of his stuff.

Basically I'm being told that I have to ferment outside in the cold becuase it will jump up 10 degrees. Then on his thumbnail I see it fermenting indoors and wrapped up. Someone who brews 250 batches will not tell me his fermentation temp on his stickers or how much I should be expecting the temps to rise.

I've rarely seen anyone videos where they are fermenting (a non lager) in a fridge.

So before I go out and spend $500 on a fridge or start putting my carboys out in the cold, I'm really trying to find out what the internal/ambeint temps are supposed to be.

This isn't trolling. This is someone trying to ask a question and not getting answers so I'll ask elsewhere.

Thanks to whoever gave me the URL regarding the accuracy of the stickers. That was something factual and a step forward in my knowledge

Its obvious [even through your text] that you are being vitriolic and it really is amazing to see pretentiousness carry so well over a forum. It seems that you fail to understand the concept that "ends" and "means" are different. Sure, you are trying to find answers(ends) but you fail to worry about the way you ask questions and they way you reply (means).

Good luck with your fermentation experiment and good luck on your future posts.
-Jefe-

 

[jppostKW]

Fermentation is an exothermic reaction.
example taken from my datalogger accurate to .1 degrees
1.069 OG stout pitched 1 pack of notti at 64 degrees. 15 hrs later high krausen. Ambient temp in chamber 57 desired ferm temp of 65 with a SS thermowell in sanke fermenter. 24 hrs later ambient of 60 36 hrs since pitching 62 degree ambient.

Good luck

 

[SwampassJ]

 

[AnOldUR]

A 10 degree differential is absolutely something that can happen. If you're fermenting a big beer or using a super active yeast, you're going to have swings like that if you don't keep them under control.

The picture of the beer in the fermenting box was a IIPA pitched with a large slurry of Pacman yeast. The picture is about a year old, but if I remember right, I went to a blow-off shortly after taking the picture. That was an extreme example, but during the initial days of fermentation I normally average around a 5 or more degree difference between ambient and carboy. Unfortunately the temperature control doesn't have a remote, so it's a juggling act to hold proper wort temps.

As for my avatar, that picture was taken during cold weather and is in a room with an ambient temperature in the 60-65 degree range. From the full sized picture below, you can see that the wort is at 68. It's covered with multiple layers for both light and to stabilize the temperature during day to night shifts. It would have gone in the fermenting box except there was something else in there.



Edit:
I just think it's a nice example of blow-off

 

[SpanishCastleAle]

In AnOldUr's set-up the 'ambient' probe is just hanging in the air. Refrigerators/freezers cycle. The temp will rise to a certain value (which will be displayed on the 'ambient' probe') and then the compressor will kick on and cool it down to another temp (which will also be displayed on the 'ambient' probe). The fermenter temp doesn't cycle with the ambient temp, there's so much thermal mass that it will remain at a constant temp. So that display will read a constant temp throughout the cycle. For all we know the 'ambient' temp in the fridge was at the low end of the cycle when that photo was taken (not that this really matters).

If it were just a carboy full of water (no heat generation), that carboy would read somewhere between the high/low temps of the cycle mentioned above, and it would read closer to the high temp than the low temp. Why? Because the fridge warms up more quickly when at the low temp than it does at the higher temp. So it spends way more time near the high temp than it does the low temp.

 

[remilard]

So I guess the OP is making coopers kits and not controlling fermentation temperature and wants to blame everything on the kits, or something?

I've had good beer from canned kits but I would agree that isn't the ideal source of ingredients.

I think if the OP acquired temp control (water bath or a fridge) and bought very fresh LME or DME instead of canned kits, that his beer would be a lot better and there would be nobody left to blame.

I'll leave before he comes back to imply that I am an idiot and all the best brewers say to ferment in a 75 degree Fahrenheit room.

 

[Beerrific]

You guys have a LOT of experience so know more than me. Jamil said the stickers were accurate to 0.5 of wort temps. So now I'm confused.

Do you have a reference for this? I am pretty sure what he was saying is that taping your temp probe to the side of the carboy is accurate to 0.5 of the center of the fermenting beer (in reference to whether or not you should use a thermowell).

If the side of your fermenter is not ever reading more than 1 degree over ambient, something is wrong. You can do the theoretical calculations and figure out that to ferment a normal-strength gravity the temperature has to increase a certain amount on average and I would be willing to bet that it will be more than 1 degree. Unless your "ambient" is so well mixed or is consisting of a material that has an extremely high heat transfer coefficient, you will always see a difference in the temperature.

 

[Bobby_M]

Cookiemonster, I don't know what the absolute numbers are but I'll go out on a limb and say that most "accomplished" brewers, however you want to qualify that, do control their ferment temps in some way.

Exhibit A: Two carboys on top are done fermenting and I'm just letting them drop clear before kegging. The bottom left is a monster barleywine that is 2 days into fermentation. The probe of the temp controller is simply rubber banded to the better bottle of the barleywine (not even insulated). The controller is set to 67F.

This is the temp strip on the barleywine:

This is the temp strip on the Amber that is not fermenting.

That's a 10F delta between dormant beer and really actively fermenting beer. Now, most beers don't ferment this exothermic because they don't start out 1.118 OG and usually don't get 900 billion yeast cells at once.

However, beer will always ferment at least a couple degrees above ambient. I would never ferment anything other than maybe a Saison at over 72F ambient.

You don't have to buy a fridge but you might want to put your fermenter in another larger bin and fill it with water. You can then drop a small bottle of ice in there twice a day for the first 1-5 days of fermentation. After that, go ahead and let it warm up. No one said this hobby wasn't a rabbit hole of brewer shortcomings. Sometimes it's easier to convince yourself that homebrewing can really be done "the easy way" and coopers cans are the shiz. ;-)

Bobby_M
(bobbyfromNJ)

 

[osagedr]

This isn't trolling. This is someone trying to ask a question and not getting answers so I'll ask elsewhere.

Please do. You may find other boards more receptive to obnoxious *********s.

Having said that...great info in the thread guys!

 

[Yambor44]

Bobby,

Your temp controller is set to 67 and strapped to the side of your actively fermenting vessel. Why is it the other is at 10 degrees less when the controller is set to keep the "ambient" (so to speak) at 67? That's weird.

 

[ArtVandelay]

Why isn't this guy banned? He was a total ****** to anybody who tried to help on the last thread I read that he started with a vague question that asked why english beer tasted better than canadian (or somewhere along the liens of that).

 

[Yooper]

Why isn't this guy banned? He was a total ****** to anybody who tried to help on the last thread I read that he started with a vague question that asked why english beer tasted better than canadian (or somewhere along the liens of that).

Because if we banned people just for being douches, I'd have to ban myself!

Seriously, sometimes poor attitudes do lead to great information, as you've seen in this thread. We're not out to get rid of anybody- all are welcome here. If you're obnoxious, though, you'll get less helpful responses in the future. If anyone is guilty of namecalling, etc, they'll be gone. No one here has crossed any lines at all. Some of us have just decided to not answer any more questions posed by certain questioners. It's a large forum, so there will always be someone around to answer questions.

 

[Yambor44]

Good God, that's not a freezer, that's a cave!

HAHAHA! Missed that!

I believe the thinking is that the insulation protects the probe from the ambient temperatures so that it is directly measuring the surface against which its placed.

Understandable. But wouldn't it, in turn, protect and insulate the probe from the temps inside the vessel?

In turn, the thermal mass of the liquid inside the fermenter is large enough that the actual fermenter material will track pretty closely to what's fermenting inside of it. In other words, 5.5g of beer has a large enough thermal mass that its not going to drop four degrees before the fermenter material changes temp at all. Obviously exactly what the material is dictates how quickly it changes in response to the contents, so the glass of a carboy will track more closely to the temperature of the fermenting wort than will plastic, but in both cases its close enough.

I agree. This is why I set the controller at 65 "ambient" (temp inside the freezer) and the 2 degree differential swings the ambient temp between 63 at the lowest to 67 at the highest. With that being said, I usually cool my beers to around 60-65 degrees before pitching my yeast. I do this by IC or CFC. I use dry yeast, Safale US-05 and pitch one packet per 5.5 gallons of wort. I do not re-hydrate. I then place it in the aforementioned environment (deep freezer). It almost always takes at least 18-24 hours before I notice bubbles in the airlock. My fermentation is normally very mild and steady for about 3-4 days then it tappers off. Most of my beers are around 1.050 to 1.060 OG. I have never checked the temp on the side of the vessel during fermentation.

I really want to understand this insulated probe thing if that will help me to control a little better. The next batch I brew (hopefully this weekend if my stand is ready) I will do a little experiment. I will leave the controller probe hanging in the "ambient" and the digital thermometer also. Both 12 INCHES (LOL) from the bottom. Then I will take a separate probe and attach it to the side of the fermenting vessel with no insulation. Then I will take yet another probe and insulate it in bubble warp and attach it to the other side of the fermenting vessel. Then I will monitor and record the temps daily for the first 7 days. That should tell me something.

 

[ChshreCat]

Bobby,

Your temp controller is set to 67 and strapped to the side of your actively fermenting vessel. Why is it the other is at 10 degrees less when the controller is set to keep the "ambient" (so to speak) at 67? That's weird.

The temp probe is attached to the barley wine that's actively fermenting. It's set to keep the barley wine at 67, not the ambient temp. So the ambient temp is going to be lower than 67 to keep the barley wine at 67.

 

[Beerrific]

Bobby,

Your temp controller is set to 67 and strapped to the side of your actively fermenting vessel. Why is it the other is at 10 degrees less when the controller is set to keep the "ambient" (so to speak) at 67? That's weird.

Because to keep the actively fermenting barleywine at 68 the fridge needs to be kept at 58 (and thus the non-fermenting beer). He has the probe attached to the side of the barleywine. So the side of the barleywine carboy is 10 degrees warmer than the ambient. Wow, that is a lot of heat.

EDIT: what he said.

 

[remilard]

I missed that this was the guy from the other thread.

He knows everything, let's all just relax, free our minds, and learn from him.

 

[SpanishCastleAle]

Understandable. But wouldn't it, in turn, protect and insulate the probe from the temps inside the vessel?

The probe should be taped/attached directly to the carboy, then insulate the outer part.

For those that keep a glass carboy in a water bath, in that case you can just measure the water bath temp and you'll be close enough. Within a degree or two ime. The water is so much of a better conductor of heat than air is, it is able to keep the carboy contents very close to the water bath temp. But in air, not so much. It may also work with Better Bottles but that plastic insulates better than glass and I don't have any Better Bottles so I haven't tried it.

 

[Yambor44]

The probe should be taped/attached directly to the carboy, then insulate the outer part.

Ahhhhhh..... now I see. Good to know. I would have totally blown my experiment!

 

[Yambor44]

The temp probe is attached to the barley wine that's actively fermenting. It's set to keep the barley wine at 67, not the ambient temp. So the ambient temp is going to be lower than 67 to keep the barley wine at 67.

Because to keep the actively fermenting barleywine at 68 the fridge needs to be kept at 58 (and thus the non-fermenting beer). He has the probe attached to the side of the barleywine. So the side of the barleywine carboy is 10 degrees warmer than the ambient. Wow, that is a lot of heat.

EDIT: what he said.

I got it. The fridge is controlled to keep the fermenting beer at 67 so the non-fermenting beer is showing closer to the ambient temp of the fridge which is what is required to keep the fermenting vessel at 67.

 

[Bobby_M]

Even though I knew fermentation was exothermic, I would have never guessed a 10F differential. The data doesn't lie though.

 

[ArtVandelay]

Because if we banned people just for being douches, I'd have to ban myself!

Seriously, sometimes poor attitudes do lead to great information, as you've seen in this thread. We're not out to get rid of anybody- all are welcome here. If you're obnoxious, though, you'll get less helpful responses in the future. If anyone is guilty of namecalling, etc, they'll be gone. No one here has crossed any lines at all. Some of us have just decided to not answer any more questions posed by certain questioners. It's a large forum, so there will always be someone around to answer questions.

Yeah, I agree. Banning is not necessary. I think my comment just came out of moderate frustration of previously posting well thought out questions in threads a couple times and getting minimal response. Then comes along this guy who criticizes every comment and gets 10 pages worth of answers.

 

[Yambor44]

Yeah, I agree. Banning is not necessary. I think my comment just came out of moderate frustration of previously posting well thought out questions in threads a couple times and getting minimal response. Then comes along this guy who criticizes every comment and gets 10 pages worth of answers.

I feel ya.

 

[permo]

I had a strong dark belgian ale in 70 degrees ambient. At the peak of fermentation it hit 82 degrees in the fermenter. It is very exothermic. I have found that cool fermentation certainly produce less exothermic heat. For example. I fermented a 1.091 IIPA at 60 degrees ambient. The temperature in the fermenter never exceeded 65 degrees, it took 9 days to finnish at 1.011. There are many variables to consider.

 

[bob1852]

For those that keep a glass carboy in a water bath, in that case you can just measure the water bath temp and you'll be close enough. Within a degree or two ime. The water is so much of a better conductor of heat than air is, it is able to keep the carboy contents very close to the water bath temp. But in air, not so much. It may also work with Better Bottles but that plastic insulates better than glass and I don't have any Better Bottles so I haven't tried it.

yes. That's why I like the water bath. I can throw a bottle or two of frozen water in the bath in the morning to keep the temps down a little while the heat of the day brings up the water temp a few degrees. And then in the evening when the ambient temps cool, I can refreeze the bottles for the next day. I figure if the water bath is 62-64, the beer is probably 66 at most (I don't completely submerge the fermenter, maybe just 1/2 way)