Temperature control. Advice Needed

[acarter5251]

I'm trying to brew a little more often and want to get a pipeline going, but the main bottleneck in my operation is fermenting with temperature control. I am planning on building a fermentation chamber in the very near future, but being that I live in a very small apartment, I will probably only be able to control the temperature of 1 fermentation at a time.

My question is: About how far into fermentation is temperature control the most important? I have seen a lot of different answers for this. How long into fermentation should it be safe to remove my fermenter from the fermentation chamber to make room for my next brew?

Thanks!

 

[giraffe]

In general 2 to 3 days, is when most esters form. But it really depends, on many factors. Im assuming ale yeasts only. (Lagers would be more problematic.) Higher gravity beers, I might give a day or two more. And it depends on your apartment tempetures. If you keep your apartment 68 degrees, its alot more feasable than if you keep your ambient temp at 75 (then it really should be in there until fermentation is complete).

 

[acarter5251]

Thanks! My apartment currently is pretty cool, but in the summer it gets pretty high in temperature. Is temperature control very important when the yeast are cleaning up towards the end of fermentation as well?

 

[Cyclman]

+1 for Ales the first few days are most important. I would recommend 5. Then, ramping up temps is no problem, might help finish fermentation, but you don't want to cool the beer down towards the end for the opposite reason.

 

[Wes440]

I live in an an apartment with ac, and during the summer I have great results from using a cooler filled 1/2 way with water, placing my glass carboy into that with a t shirt on top to wick up water and create a natural evaporative cooler.

I've also used frozen water bottles to keep the water cold, rotating the melted ones with frozen bottles from the freezer. It's a pretty good way of controlling the temperature during primary, especially with big beers that heat up due to vigorous fermentation.

 

[Wes440]

Like this:

 

[acarter5251]

Yeah I went that route previously, and it worked fairly well. Biggest problem is that I'm gone most of the day and the temperature would tend to swing while I was away. I'm gonna try and get a mini fridge fermentation chamber going to get a little bit of a steadier temperature now

 

[dfhar]

For ales in the 1.050ish range fermented in the 60s, I would say 5 days in general. Some yeast will work faster and others slower.

 

[jbb3]

I would say 5 to 7 days in the chamber then use a swamp cooler like Wes440 describes to finish it out.

 

[acarter5251]

Thanks. I was just trying to get the swamp cooler out of the apartment since it's taking up some needed space and the SWMBO isn't a big fan of looking at it