Temperature drop during fermenting?

[Antti]

So, we needed to get to the city from our "homestead" for couple of days.

The temperature dropped from 19°C to 12°C.

Just arrived and noticed this, and the fermenter isn't bubbling now...

It used to bubble fast when we left.

Background and volume info:
I accidentally added 8g of yeast to a 3-4L batch into the 5L fermenter.
This should ferment 2 weeks, and now it has been in the fermenter for 6-7 days

Is everything lost? Should I wait till it heats up back to the 19°C?

What is the best way to react when something like this happens?

 

[mac_1103]

What kind of beer? What strain of yeast? How long was it at 19C before it dropped to 12C?
It's not all that unusual for fermentation to be done in 3 days or less, especially with that big a pitch in that small a batch.

What is the best way to react when something like this happens?

RDWHAHB

 

[Antti]

Okeydoke, my bad, I forgot to tell all the information:

-Yeast: Lallemand, New England

-Beer: Ale (kind of IPA, recipe from Finnish book, I'm from Finland)

-OG:1,041

It was at 19°C for two days, and then temperature was slowly declining...

 

[wallyLOZ]

IMHO, I would allow it to return to 19c and resume the count of the number of days in the fermenter from there.

My brews stay in the fermenter for 21 days routinely. Others on this site do the same thing, some wait even longer. The extra time allows the yeast time to clean up and lessen off flavors. Your beer is finished when you get two gravity readings, a couple days apart, that are the same.

Keep us posted of the result!

 

[mac_1103]

It was at 19°C for two days, and then temperature was slowly declining...

I would allow it to return to 19c and resume the count of the number of days in the fermenter from there.

I wouldn't bother counting days at all since a) you really don't know how many days it fermented with a gradual temperature drop like that, and b) it doesn't matter anyway. And don't necessarily expect it to start bubbling fast again when the you get the temperature back up to 19C, since you don't know how much fermentable sugar you have left in there. If you can get a sample without opening the fermenter then take a gravity reading to see where things stand.

 

[Miraculix]

Bring back to temperature, rouse the yeast a little bit, wait seven days, bottle. It's most likely done already anyway.

 

[hotbeer]

Most beers are probably fully fermented in 3 to 4 days from pitch. However you should keep it in the fermenter for the two full weeks that the instructions say. Yeast still do stuff after they finish fermenting your beer. They remove the off flavors and aromas that can be produced during their actual fermentation process. And it gives time for excess yeast and other stuff suspended in your beer to settle to the bottom.

I've even had some beers be fully fermented in 2½ day from pitch using normal ale yeast such as S-04 and even US-05 when I did a massive over pitch.

I wouldn't worry about bubbles. I only think of bubbles as entertainment. No real value to saying if a beer is finished or doing well. Just bring the FV back to your 20C fermentation temp, which is what I always use, and let it sit for the prescribed time.

The longer I wait to bottle, the better the beer has been. All the beers I left for 4 to 6 weeks in the FV were great beers. The beers I only leave in the FV for less than 2 weeks are sometimes good and sometimes not so good. None that were as outstanding IMO as the 6 week beer.

 

[Antti]

Quick update:
finished bottling and tasted the non-carbonated beer from the FG-measurement.
It was good and hoppy.
Little bit too hoppy.
Can't wait to test is after couple of weeks, when carbonated!

So the temperature drop didn't really affect it in a detrimental way.

 

[BongoYodeler]

Quick update:
finished bottling and tasted the non-carbonated beer from the FG-measurement.
It was good and hoppy.
Little bit too hoppy.
Can't wait to test is after couple of weeks, when carbonated!

So the temperature drop didn't really affect it in a detrimental way.

Did you take a gravity reading before bottling the beer? If so, was it as expected? If you didn't take a reading, and it were me, I would put all the bottles in a plastic tote (box) with a snap-on lid for 2-3 weeks, which is probably a good practice anyway.

 

[Antti]

Did you take a gravity reading before bottling the beer? If so, was it as expected? If you didn't take a reading, and it were me, I would put all the bottles in a plastic tote (box) with a snap-on lid for 2-3 weeks, which is probably a good practice anyway.

Yeah, I did but my 100ml tall sampling glass was too short and I didn't get any reading, since it didn't want to float...

At the beginning it was 1.037, but now after two weeks of fermentation, I didn't get the reading...