Jon Palmer mentioned that two methods of managing fermentation temperatures are holding a very steady temperature or starting lower and letting the temperature rise naturally within the range of the yeast strain.
What are your thoughts? I like the idea of starting low and holding temp. for the first 48 hours or so and then letting it rise slowly.
That’s what I do most of the time. Pitch a bit below the target temp, let sit for a few days, let rise on its own a 4-6 degrees.
It depends on the beer I am making.
Edit - I should say more.
Pilsners pitch colder by a few degrees and let rise to a steady temperature for 3/4 fermentaion, then do a D-rest.
American ales pitch cool and let it come up.
British beers I would pitch warmer and let it come up a little.
Saisons would be pitched high and slowly ramped up.
+1 exactly what I do.
+2
I am pretty much in the same camp as everybody else here. There is lots of ramping in my fermentation schedule. I’m not as aggressive with the ramping on clean ale strains but saison yeast and lagers are carefully monitored and ramped on a specific schedule.
Either way you need some type of control on fermentation temperature. Holding a consistent temperature is easy with hardware designed to alter temperatures (e.g. fridge) but even trying to ramp temperatures appropriately using ambient temperature requires knowing how fast the beer temperature will rise and what to do if the beer is getting too warm too fast and vice versa. Don’t confuse the opportunity to use ambient temperatures to naturally ramp the beer to mean you can just pitch the yeast and let it go and assume you will get a good, repeatable fermentation process.
Yes, I understand. My method of climate control keeps the beer pretty locked in. Previously I was really never letting the temp rise until after fermentation.
I have gone to the Brulosopher fermentation approach with my lagers. Grain to glass in 24 days and clean tasting beer…
You have to realize that is how the big guys do it, but they are more like 21 days or less. I have been doing this for a long time, as Kai has the fermentation profile on his page.
I always pitch about 5 degrees under and let it rise to desired temp an hold it there. Not a problem with lagers as I use a an empty keezer. Harder (but not real hard) with ales because they sit in a rope bucket with water to avoid temp swings.
For the folks who let the temps rise a bit later in fermentation…how high did you allow the fermentation to rise? I started around 65 or so with this WLP001 and after a few days let it rise slowly to 70. It could probably go higher considering the ambient temps here in FL now and still be well within the range for the yeast.
For ales, I hold at my desired temp until I see fermentation begin to slow. For me, there isn’t a set number of days for this because each beer has unique gravity, malt content and yeast which will impact how long this takes. After I see fermentation begin to slow I will bump it up a couple degrees.
I use a very small chest freezer and a fermwrap.
I’ve never checked this method out before. This is nice and validating. I’m not a lager brewer, typically, but I’ve got 10 gallons happily fermenting at 52 right now. I’ll let it ramp up over a few days and then try to bring it back down as far as I can get it with a water bath, insulation, and frozen bottles of water.