Hot answers tagged temperature
16
There are a few methods, each with advantages and drawbacks.
Cool your Kettle
Take your hot brew kettle, full of wort, and submerge it in ice water.
Advantages: No real equipment expense, just take your pot and put it in a cooler or bathtub full of ice water.
Drawbacks: Extremely slow, higher risk of contamination. Probably have to change out the ice ...
13
Pitching yeast into wort that is too warm can cause a number of problems. At the very worst, you'll shock the yeast and/or kill it, and you'll have a stuck fermentation. Another problem with pitching too warm (and maintaining fermentation too warm) is that it can cause the yeast to produce unwanted off-flavors in the beer.
Letting the wort sit longer to ...
10
With a beer that strong, you probably should have repitched at bottling. There are several factors that the yeast must fight in this situation, including:
high alcohol strength - almost 10% ABV
cool temperature - the bottom two degrees of the yeast's fermentation range
long settling time - six weeks
There's good news, though. That strain should be able ...
10
Whirlpool chilling utlilizes a pump and an immersion chiller. Many brewers that have an immersion chiller will find that an upgrade to a pump for other uses allows them to get better chilling from the immersion chiller.
A whirlpool chiller uses a pump to pull wort from the base of the kettle, then returns the wort to the top of the kettle. The return is ...
8
It's best to keep it as constant as possible until the primary fermentation is complete. It can be critical when you are reaching the end of fermentation to adjust the temperature slightly as there is not as much heat being produced from yeast reactions. If the temperture drops a couple of degrees certain strains of yeast can flocculate too soon leaving ...
8
The temperature rise will be depend on how vigorous the fermentation is, and on the volume and shape of the vessel you ferment in. You'll see a temperature rise of about 5-10 degrees on the homebrew scale, in my experience. Still, it varies widely.
I would suggest getting one of the thermometer strips available at your local homebrew shops. They are ...
8
Yeast work better at warmer temps, and at this point you want the yeast to ferment the priming and carb your beer. That means you should keep the beer around 70-75°F (21-24°C) while you're trying to carb it. Once it's carbed, putting it in the fridge will not only aid the dissolution of CO2 into the beer, but will also retard staling. At this point, your ...
8
There are several things to consider here. Certainly slowing down your boil will change your rate of evaporation, but that's only a problem if you're having a hard time hitting your target volumes. The main consideration is your bitterness contribution from hops.
Alpha acid isomerization, like most chemical reactions, is temperature dependent. It happens at ...
8
This method is sometimes referred to as a "swamp cooler", and is well known and used in homebrewing circles. Honestly, if the brew shop employee told you it wouldn't work then they are either (a) trying to sell you a brewing fridge, or (b) not that educated on homebrewing.
Change out some ice packs in the water twice a day and you get get down to the low ...
7
Temp swings can cause problems, but temps as high as what you've got can cause even worse problems. Keep in mind that fermentation is an exothermic process. Therefore, you should chill your wort to below the temp you want to ferment at and then let it rise to the proper range. Don't sacrifice beer quality and flavor for a short lag time or fast ...
7
I would get hold of another sachet of yeast as a backup. If you have a local homebrew store, almost any type of yeast will work for this kit, but I'd recommend Safale US-05 if you can get that, since that will give you a cleaner profile. If they have liquid yeasts, then Wyeast 1056 or White Labs WLP001 will produce equivalent results. Once you've got hold of ...
7
1) Can I just place my fermentation tank in this tub of water to counter the heat? Yes. This will work to a degree (ha, ha.) The water is slowly but constantly evaporating. The energy need to make liquid water into gas comes out of the water's temperature. This "evaporative cooling" will help cool your wort by a few degrees.
2) Will this method work during ...
6
Both questions resolve to the same issue - there's a chance of something other than your yeast taking over the nice environment you've made for microbes. By not letting it cool sufficiently, you risk killing off enough yeast that something else can muscle in. Unfortunately, the longer you let the wort sit before pitching your yeast, the more likely that ...
6
74-78F is on the warm side, so you'll want to reduce time spent at that temperature to a minimum to reduce the chance of staling reactions from affecting the beer. On the plus side, the high temperature means the yeast won't need more than 3 days to ferment the priming sugars and clean up, after which you can then chill the bottles for a few days to allow ...
6
The bulk of the starch-sugar conversion happens in the first 15 minutes of the mash, so that's probably not a big problem. You might need to mash for 90-120 minutes rather than 60 to get a really good, full conversion, though.
I usually have to do a longer mash when I'm mashing "cool" (which you are), anyway.
5
You most certainly can do a decoction at home. And decoction does more than just increase the temperature of the mash. The primary reason for it is melanoidin production in the wort. This creates a complexity of malt flavors in the wort that might not be there otherwise. I have several friends that have done it. Watching it being done its not hard, just ...
5
Play around with the temperature until you find what you like. I tend to leave my fridge around +45°F (or +7°C). I've found that gives me temperature I like best across styles.
Here's a general temperature guide for styles.
5
Beer absorbs more CO2 when it's cold than when it's warm. Since your beer has been cold, it's reabsorbed some of the CO2 created during fermentation. You need to take that into account, whether bottling or kegging, or your beer will be overcarbonated. Most priming calculators let you enter the temp of the beer to ascertain the amount of priming sugar or ...
5
All temperatures are in expressed in degrees F.
correction = 1.313454 - 0.132674*F + 0.002057793*F*F - 0.000002627634*F*F*F
SG_corrected = SG + (correction * 0.001)
http://www.primetab.com/formulas.html
agrees with http://brewery.org/library/HydromCorr0992.html
5
This sounds about right. A bigger brew doesn't always hit FG within 4 days. I'm sure you'll be fine leaving it another week.
The mash temperature is high, so this could have produced a larger than normal amount of non-fermentables, leading to a high FG. But, I wouldn't make that conclusion until after at least another week has passed, with an ambient temp ...
5
If your wort was at 80°F/27°C, you definitely didn't kill your yeast. Yeast thrive at temperatures well into the 90s, and can survive significantly higher.
You don't want to ferment at that temperature, though, and likewise you don't want to pitch that warm because immediately dropping the temperature can cause your yeast to flocculate early.
4
Carbonate the bottles at 60-70F like ales is fine. There is so little fermentation going on you have very little "non-lager" character contributions from the yeast carbonating at that temp.
When worrying about the temperature remember that many brewers routinely ramp up the temp for a couple days to perform a diacetyl rest and that temp bump doesn't harm ...
4
A few things on fermentation....
Airlock activity is not an indication of fermentation. Just because you don't see bubbles and a hear a gurgling airlock does not mean that your wine is not fermenting.
To take readings you need a hydrometer. A hydrometer measures a liquids gravity (or density). Liquid is more dense with sugar, and less with out. As yeast ...
4
From White Labs Yeast Storage and Maintenance:
As yeast sit in storage, they consume
their glycogen reserves. Glycogen
deprivation weakens their cell walls,
and makes them more susceptible to
rupture. Cold temperatures retard this
process, but you want to avoid
freezing yeast, as ice crystals will
also rupture cells. The ideal storage
...
4
In addition to everyone else's comments, I would add that temperature swings within the first 72 hours are dangerous for the flavor of the beer, but outside of that window, the fermentation is mostly finished, in terms of volume, so it's harder to ruin the flavor. It sounds like you were barely outside that window.
However, you were definitely too warm for ...
4
In the first couple days of active fermentation, the beer itself can rise to as much as 10F over ambient temp. That's why it's always best to chill your wort to a bit below fermentation temp and let the activity of fermentation bring it into the correct range. 17C would be an excellent temp for the beer. Be sure that you measure the beer temp, not the ...
4
If you have a cooler that will hold your fermentor (i've used my mash tun with a blanket or sleeping bag draped over it to hold the cold in), 4+ plastic bottles that you can fill with water & freeze (ice packs also work), and a closet that you can keep at a semi-stable temperature, you might be OK with either of them, but you'd probably also want room ...
4
I've found that software and calculations can get you close, but not exact. There's too much variability in each brewer's system. You kind of have to get a feel for your brew system over time.
First, take out as many variables as you can. Always start with your grain at the same temp. Always start with your mash tun at the same temp before pre-heating ...
4
Once fermentation is mostly complete, keeping the fermentor at the ideal temperature (68, in this case) is less important. The yeast tend to give off fusels and other off flavors at high temperatures mainly during the early stages of fermentation, so raising the temperature won't matter as much. Since fermentation is mostly complete, lowering the temperature ...
4
Hehe, bad idea - you couldn't have a beer on brewday since you'd have to stay sober to handle this with appropriate care!
But seriously, I'm wondering that if you have to ask the question about suitability then you are probably not familiar with handling liquid nitrogen. As well as getting suitable training, you would need equipment that is designed to ...
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