Optimal fermentation temperature fluctuations

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Johan Dingler

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Hello, everyone. I finally arrived at a temperature control set up that exponentially improved my brews.

I have a thermowell in my fermentor inside of a chest freezer with a fermwrap on one of the walls of the freezer. This has worked incredibly well. I'm using an inkbird wifi to control heating/cooling and the temperature of the liquid ranges from 65 F to 67.5 F through the whole two weeks I usually leave my beers in fermentation.

My question is, would closing the gap of these fluctuations further improve my beer in any significant way? Or what I have now is more than enough.

Cheers!
 
I work in industrial process control, and keeping temperature within about a half degC (assuming you’re set point is between the two values you mentioned) is acceptable for large scale biotech pharmaceuticals, so I would probably say that you are about as good as you are going to get without a lot more investment. I would look elsewhere for improvement at this point. Any resources spent improving this would likely be better spent on something else.
 
I work in industrial process control, and keeping temperature within about a half degC (assuming you’re set point is between the two values you mentioned) is acceptable for large scale biotech pharmaceuticals, so I would probably say that you are about as good as you are going to get without a lot more investment. I would look elsewhere for improvement at this point. Any resources spent improving this would likely be better spent on something else.

Thanks!!! Thats what I thought, but wanted to get input from people more knowledgable than me.
 
Your yeast have a range of preferred temperature so your small fluctuation is no problem. You don't need to control it for the whole 2 weeks though. Once the yeast have ripped through the easy to digest sugars and have started to slow down you can let the beer warm to room temp to encourage or help them digest the last of it. Think 4 or 5 days in strict control, then let them go.

By doing this, it can free up your chamber for another beer. If you put two in at once, one gets controlled and the other runs wild. The wild one can get too warm or too cold while the controller tries to keep the other one at optimum temperature.
 
Your yeast have a range of preferred temperature so your small fluctuation is no problem. You don't need to control it for the whole 2 weeks though. Once the yeast have ripped through the easy to digest sugars and have started to slow down you can let the beer warm to room temp to encourage or help them digest the last of it. Think 4 or 5 days in strict control, then let them go.

By doing this, it can free up your chamber for another beer. If you put two in at once, one gets controlled and the other runs wild. The wild one can get too warm or too cold while the controller tries to keep the other one at optimum temperature.

Unfortunately where I live room temperature is 100 F+. Its not that expensive energywise anyway. The chamber usually runs for 2-3 45 min long heating-cooling cycles and then stabilizes for ~20 hours. Its really cool!

And about space, my chamber fits two fermentors, and so far what Ive been doing is to always put the thermowell on the newest brew.

However its good to know that temp control is only crucial during the first days!!
 
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