I cut a hole in the lid of mine and can close it on a carboy. I’ve gone down to 50 on a Scotch ale and could probably go lower.
It also makes a wonderful mash tun… For a couple of reasons, but most importantly, it’s blue!
Awesome! I have a cooler very similar to that packed away. It never even occurred to me to use it for fermentation. Thanks for the idea!
I am definitely starting to get more off flavors and think an infection may be developing as it ages…hard to tell right now. It smells fine but leaves sort of a sour twang on the back of the tongue after a while. I was looking at descriptions of off flavors yesterday but none seemed to be the right fit.
When my house was in the high 70’s during the summer, two medium size ice packs would keep it in the mid 60’s. I swapped them twice a day for fresh ones. As soon as fermentation slows I let it rise to room temp.
36 hours for fermentation to take off would worry me.
I’ve got a porter right now that took 48 hours and three separate pitches of dry yeast to get going. Not sure I’ll be buying any more Danstar yeast but the first two packets were kinda old.
I brew this porter every year to make my vanilla porter and since I don’t care too much about yeast character in it I pitch whatever older dry yeast I have on hand. I’ve had two batches get infected when lag times have been excessive.
So I am pretty sure this beer just has a case of off flavors and not an infection. It doesn’t seem to be getting any worse. It is drinkable so I will continue to drink it until it is gone or I have enough beer ready to go.
I honestly don’t mind it much but my buddy thought it tasted like a Belgian beer which is about the complete opposite of what I was going for…haha