Temperature

[davebullivant]

I am currently brewing in my Kitchen, and fermenting in a food grade plastic bucket. My heating goes on twice a day, but I have rubbish sash windows that let the heat out pretty quickly. It never gets freezing in the house, but it is far from a constant temperature.

My question is, how much of a difference do people think it would make to keep the brew at a constant temperature? I have had pretty good brews doing it this way, but I am wondering if I am missing a trick by letting the temp fluctuate so much.

Thoughts?

Dave

[Beer O'Clock]

Get an aquarium heater. They work a treat.

[Kev888]

Its perhaps a question of how much it changes really. If you can keep it about right it'll usually work, the beer has quit a lot of thermal mass so it'll help to iron out the changes a bit too. But if it gets too cold or changes too much you can get less attenuation (or of course stopped ferments in extreme cases). Some ale yeasts handle cooler temperatures better than others though (obviously lager yeast is different again), not exactly sure which but in the past I used notts quite a lot in my less than ideal house temperatures and it usually soldiered on.

However, it also affects taste; warmer fermentations can work well and speedily but result in more yeast flavour/character (too much if its too warm, as many old books used to encourge). My house is very inconsistant temperature wise, and I definately found that my beer became more consistant in flavour when I made a controlled cupboad/fridge affair, and that was even before I started getting into different/liquid yeasts. It wasn't that I didn't manage to make good beer before, it was more another step towards reducing causes of the less good ones.

Cheers
kev