My First Brew

[Homebier]

My First Home Brew

Using YEAST STRAIN: 1332 | Northwest Ale from Wyeast to make a red ale with caramel malts and extracts that came in a kit.

A couple of things I lost control of:

1. Water boil off and boil over caused fermentation volume to be about 3.85 gallons and not 5 gallons.
2. Digital thermometer broke while using wort chiller and temperature got to 40-45 F.
3. Pitched yeast between 50-55 F without shocking yeast but took 2 days before seeing fermentation activity (CO2). Ambient room temperature is 69-71 F.
4. A medium scent of bannana can be detected in area where wort is fermenting.

Now all the threads I've read says the ambient temperature may be high.

Is there anything I should be doing to lower the temperature to control any off flavors?

I enjoy a balance beer.

 

[Kungpaodog]

You'll still probably get a damn fine beer, just look at this as a learning opportunity.

Smelling bananas while it's fermenting probably will not have anything to do with the final taste, so that should be the last worry you could have. If it has any odd tastes when you rack to secondary or take a gravity reading, more time in primary can give the yeast time to eat up any esters they mad eduring fermentation.

What was the OG reading? Unless you lost a ton of wort in the boil over, you probably should have topped off to 5 gallons of wort before you pitched.

The ambient room temp may be a bit higher than ideal, but you shouldn't worry too much about that. I ferment most of my beers around 66* F since they are in the same place I bottle condition, and it seems to take a long time for my bottles to carb at lower temps.

Bottom line: RDWHAHB

 

[NewBrew75]

The ambient temp may be too high if the fermentation is causing it to get above 70. You need a LCD thermometer on the side of your fermentor to monitor the actual temp. Find a cooler spot in the house(basement, closet), or use a room that you can close some heater vents on. Another simple method to get your temps down is called a swamp cooler. Do a search on that, but it's likely that you will not need to resort to that this time of year.

 

[Yooper]

That yeast strain does ok up to about 72-75 degrees (wort temperature, not room temperature) and gets a bit fruity at over 68 or so. That can be a good thing, and I like it in IPAs.