Sticker showing almost 8 degrees warmer than room temp

[mlfarrell]

I'm brewing an ESB using WLP-005. I figured since the yeast I'm using is a bit more on the dry side, it'd be okay to overshoot the recommended temp of 70 degrees a bit, but I'm surprised this morning to see the sticker showing colors around 74-76 when I went out of my way to make it cold as hell in my apt kitchen overnight. I had the ac on full blast and its chilly in here (room temp is like 68), plus I put a big bag of ice close (not touching) in a kettle under the fermenter overnight as well. I've had the fermenter wrapped in a towel to avoid light, but I can't imagine that'd insulate it from the air THAT much.

Do those fermenter stickers tend to be off by a fair amount?

Most of the primary happened last night since I used a yeast starter, so I'm hoping I didn't botch this batch by running too warm.

 

[Joshua Hughes]

Fermentation creates a rise in temperature above the room Temp. the sticker is probably right

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

Sure the sticker could be off a little, but fermentation itself produces heat so it likely is in the mid 70s. That said before I had temp control I made a lot of beer that likely fermented to high and you are only about 5degrees over. It will not ruin your batch.

 

[mlfarrell]

Thanks for the quick replies. My first batch was done in january (where in san diego is more in the 60's air temp) and it came out okay.

I will say I tasted the starter wort that sat above this cake after I decanted it to see what kind of flavors warm fermentation would create, and I didn't notice anything all that bad. So I suppose it'll turn out okay. Just trying to be a perfectionist. Temp control is apparently harder than it looks.

 

[Golddiggie]

If you're not able to maintain the fermenting temperature in the 'happy' range of the yeast, look into fermenting under pressure. It WILL require a pressure rated fermenter though. Kegmenters are pretty common for this use. There are other things, like plastic ones, but you'll also need to shield the batch from light during fermentation. IMO/IME, having to do that is a PITA (or becomes one pretty fast). A lot of people use full dark rooms to ferment in to eliminate (or highly reduce) the time light is touching the beer.

Personally, I've enjoyed using stainless fermenters for years. Never had a skunked batch since I never let sunlight touch my beer. I was either brewing at night, or in a basement, until recently.

Yes, pressure rated fermenters are not as cheap as plastic carboys/buckets. BUT, they have advantages. Get one that can also accept a chill coil and you could use a glycol chiller as well. Then you could decide either how much pressure to retain during fermentation and/or to use the chiller to maintain the fermenting beer temperature. I'm doing both with the latest batch right now. Maintaining about 8psi in fermenter as well as fermenting temperature in the 69.7-70.3F range.

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

There are a handful of ways to control temp and once you decide how to go about it the best way for you it will produce better beer. My only way of controlling temp in the past was to keep it in a room that was the closest in temp to what was recommended, so I went without temp control for years and made many good beers that way. However once I moved forward and got temp control it improved my beer greatly.

 

[mlfarrell]

the thing here is i live in a relatively small condo, so the space for each new big piece of brewing equipment comes at a premium. Hence, I've been doing it with as few large items as possible. Sofar its been working out pretty okay. We'll see how the beer turns out. Also it helps that, within reason, fruity esters dont bother me.

 

[Golddiggie]

Replacing the current fermenters for ones that can handle pressure should be a zero footprint gain (once you eliminate the old fermenters).

Besides reducing the impact of high fermentation temperature on your beer, you have the added benefit of partially carbonating the batch while fermenting. You'll still need to finish the carbonation process if you don't add a way to drop the finished beer temperature to a point where you can finish carbonating in fermenter (I'm going through the carbonation process now, already dropped the temperature).

IME/IMO there are a lot of little/easy things you can do to improve your beer by the time it gets into the glass.

 

[mlfarrell]

Temperature control is a bigger deal during primary fermentation (first 3 days or so) right? After that I'm hoping I can turn the AC off and let the ambient san diego air in (70-75 degrees next week). This particular batch is staying in primary for 4 weeks before I bottle, so I'm hoping thats okay.

Running my AC unit 24/7 for a full month would create a super high electric bill here.

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

70 to 75 .. yeah it is ok, try to keep somewhere cool as possible but it will be fine. Might drive some off flavor but I would not be overly concerned. Now if it gets to 80, different story. You can use a water bath to help regulate temp but that can be challenging also. This may cause it to over attenuate, giving a lower final gravity resulting in a more dry finish.

 

[Yooper]

I've personally seen a fermenting beer be 10 degrees (F) above ambient. You can try a swamp cooler set up (say a wet towel with a fan blowing on it) or a cooler water bath. I did that to make a lager- put the fermenter in a cooler, added water to the beer line, and then added a frozen water bottle. I floated a thermometer in there to make sure the water wasn't too cold- and it held the temperature very well!

 

[Golddiggie]

I'd maintain proper temperature, for the yeast used, for the entire fermentation time. Unless, as I've already mentioned, you take additional steps to mitigate the potential negative flavors caused by fermenting too warm.

The room I ferment in (it has plenty of other things in it too) is at almost 80F right now. Between the glycol chiller running to maintain carbonation temperature, and my home virtualization lab hardware (was in the 73-75F range before the chiller kicked into high gear) it's never at a normal basement temperature these days. It's one of the reasons I had a fermentation chamber before now (when fermenting in sanke kegmenters).

You could always try to make a small fermentation chamber out of a mini fridge if you're only fermenting one batch at a time. Extend the area it keeps cool just enough to fit your fermenter into it. IIRC, there's some threads on here showing how people have done that in the past. It really won't take up that much more room than what you're doing now. It will allow you to use your AC as you would otherwise too.