First Brew!

[boltsfan]

Made my first brew (American Wheat) yesterday afternoon. All went fairly smooth and was easier than I expected. No boil over!

I pitched yeast a lil high (mid 80s) but all was ok this morning with air lock bubbling about twice per second and lots of activity. Wort temp was high at 78 but I thought it would go down throughout the day as house stays around 72-74 degrees. Got home and was still at 78 so I put carboy (6gal better bottle) in a ice bucket and filled w/ a few inches of ice. Then covered carboy with a wet bath towel. Its been about an 2 hours and the temp now reads 70 degrees.

How low should I take the temp down to and try to maintain?

I don't mind slight banana flavor so will it mellow out the next few days if I keep in mid-high 60s?

I searched and read several topics on American Wheats and Hefes and everyone seems to agree to disagree on ferment temps and days to ferment

Thanks for the help

 

[sm007thie]

Those are pretty high temps IMO. If you're shooting for a slight fruitiness, you're better of hovering around the top end of the fermentation range for your yeast, not 10 degrees over it. I don't like fruity, banana, bubble gum flavors in my beers though, so I try to avoid high temps.

As far as how long to kep temps down... I'm a practical person. I'd love to keep my fermenters in the mid to high 60's all the way until I bottle. I don't have the right equipment though, so it's a pain in my arse. I usually only keep it cool for about a week after the vigorious activity looks complete. After that, I keep it below 75 which is much more managable. I've personally have never had any problems with this. Ideally--ideally though, you want to keep your fermenters at the proper temp the entire time until you bottle.

Remember also that fermentation is an exothermic process. Account for this by pitching a little cooler than your target temp and working a little more to keep your fermenter cool until the yeast complete their exponential growth phase.

 

[BeerJorge]

If you are looking to get the fruity/bready flavors, then high 60s... If you want to reduce them, low 60s....

I just brewed a Bavarian Hefe and fermented at 69 F.... turned out great!

 

[MikeG]

Ferment in a swamp cooler next go round - cheap to put together, search for it on this site.

For that style of beer you should be 10F lower. Don't worry about your first batch but focus on your 2nd and I think you'll really appreciate the difference fermenting around 65-68F.

 

[boltsfan]

I can only seem to keep temp around 68-70 degrees.

Airlock is only bubbling once per 15-20 seconds. It has been 5 days... when should I take a hydrometer reading?

Thanks!

 

[sm007thie]

As far as the fermenting process, I pretty much only take hydrometer readings before I bottle, just so that I can calculate ABV and see if my recipe turned out as planned. Sometimes I'll do a hydro when transferring to the secondary. It's easy enough, so why not? Other than that, I never really understood the point. There is nothing that I'm going to do to make it ferment more or less, so taking lots of hydrometer readings to monitor the fermenting process (to me) is just a contamination risk and a waste of beer.

Short answer: take it in another 3 weeks when you transfer it to your bottling bucket.