Well, I am starting to make my final brew house purchases. I purchased a BrewJacket Immersion Pro from Adventures in Homebrewing for $200.00 and a Danby black 7.2 cu. ft. freezer for $318.00. Danby has a white 7.2 cu. ft. freezer for a little less money, but it is not garage ready. Plus, I prefer black for a kegerator.
I am not planing on using it as a wort chiller. I am planning on using it as a fermentation temperature controller. I always pitch when the wort is several degrees warmer than my desired fermentation temperature and allow the temperature to fall within 24 hours. I do not subscribe to the pitching lower than fermentation temperature and allowing the wort to come up to fermentation nonsense. That nonsense is only necessary when one is attempting to trick the yeast culture into performing the task at hand instead of picking the yeast culture that can actually perform the task at hand. It also displays an ignorance as to wort composition. The carbon to nitrogen ratio controls ester production, not the fermentation temperature (see Have You Seen Ester? | Experimental Brewing).
ok, so be advised, I have no formal education in the sciences, so apologies if I ask you questions that seem obvious. you wrote “Fermenting at low temperatures slows yeast metabolism, and anything that slows metabolism slows growth. Most of the esters and higher alcohols are produced during the growth phase. Slowing metabolism reduces metabolite production”
So temp does play some role, right? I mean, its all anecdotal, but homebrew seems to massively improve with temp control.
and later on “Finally, the type of sugar being metabolized plays an important role in the creation of higher alcohols, which, in turn, plays a role in ester production. Sucrose and fructose result in increased higher alcohol production, and so does glucose to an extent.”
If higher alcohols are an issue in a sugar adjunct heavy beer like a tripel, could using glucose instead of table sugar be the solution?