First time brewing beer

[tkdowell]

Hello!

First time making beer. I went with the Rocky Mountain Maple Stout, it was on sale at Indigo up here in Canada for $15 CAD. Figured it was a good way to ease into it. I am sure it will be a pretty average beer but that is OK for my first time.

I have made wine once before, although unsuccessfully, I took it out of secondary fermentation too quickly. For this beer, I have many questions the first of which is what temperature should the beer be kept at?

I have an old fridge outside in the unseated (but insulated) garage. The directions just say a cool, dark place. The garage is at 9 degrees and will probably cool overnight. I plan to use the fridge as an insulator. I have a light in there I can plug in and I warm the fridge to 18 degrees with it, I plan to put it on a timer to try to regulate it. Maybe eventually order one of those thermostat plug-in devices off of Amazon (sth 1000?). It only took 20 minutes to warm the air to 18, and roughly three times that to cool back down.

So two questions. What temperature should I target? Given my setup, what’s the best way to achieve that?

Ambient temperature is going to be close to 0 or below 0. Eventually I will heat the garage (at least partially) but for now it will be close to the outside temperature (plus or minus some insulation, plus the insulation of the fridge and the heat off the fermentation).

Cheers,

Tyler

 

[AkTom]

Spend the money on a temp controller. Depending on the the yeast, 18*. Is probably good. I'd put some water in a carboy and see what it takes to keep it at 18.

 

[Rob2010SS]

I agree with AkTom. Get a temp controller to plug that fridge into. That'll make your brewing life pretty easy. I just recently bought an InkBird off of Amazon for $40 and it works great.

In regards to what temp to keep it at, depends on the yeast. Every yeast will have an optimum temp. You should be able to find it on the package or if you post what kind of yeast is here, we can help point out the optimum temp. Ideally, you'll want to stay in that range. Too cold and the yeast will take forever to do their job or they'll go dormant. Too warm and you'll get off flavors.

What yeast is it?

 

[ProblemChild]

Agreed with both above. Cooler than desired ambient is a great problem - especially with the setup you have. Get a basic inkbird and plug the lamp into it. Probably not enough UV from the light bulb to affect the beer, but might want to cover it anyway. Just keep as much space between the lamp and the fermenter as possible to ensure there are no hot spots on the fermenter. That or place a small barrier between them so the heat is more gentle and indirect.

Addition - might want to consider a computer fan or similar running while the lamp is on to keep the air mixed and temps uniform

 

[Pappers_]

Generally for ales, you want to target 65 F or 18C.

 

[ericbw]

It will be easier and cheaper to heat the fridge than to heat the garage (for now). Plus you can control it easily and pretty accurately with a controller. And the Inkbirds seems to be pretty cost effective. It used to be cheaper to build your own controller, when they cost $75 or something stupid.

Also, no need to even drill holes in the fridge - just put the wires through the door and close it.

 

[Pappers_]

If you have a basement that flucuates between 65 - 70F, that's a good option.