I’ve got 5 gallons of porter that has been fermenting in a water bath for 6 days at 70 F with Safale S 04. The outside weather is getting cooler and I could move it into my garage and probably drop the fermentation temp by 3 or 4 degrees. After 60 days at 70 F, will this make any appreciable difference in taste or quality?
Thanks in advance for your advice.
Nope.
Are you referring to ambient or the fermentation temperature? I use S04 pretty regularly and don’t care for it at 68F or above as it seems to get estery with a strange bready character. At this point, 3-4 degrees lower won’t hurt anything.
I don’t see a benefit to moving the beer and see a possible downside if the yeast aren’t finished cleaning up after themselves , e.g., reabsorbing diacetyl. Having said that, I don’t have much experience with S-04.
I work hard to avoid lowering temp until the beer is completed. In my understanding, as fermentation winds down, a drop in temp can cause yeast to quit early.
+1
EDIT - After this many days the fermentation profile is pretty much set, in terms of esters, possible fusels,etc. So lowering won’t do a bit of good and could be a negative in terms of letting the yeast clean up off flavors/aromas, as mentioned.
I typically start low and bring the temp up after the first 3 - 5 days.
When I’ve had temp drops, I’ve had fermentation take much longer to hit final gravity.
I don’t see an issue with dropping from 70 to 66-67 at this point.
That is a pretty insignificant drop, but I agree that typically, I seek to go up in temp at the tail end of primary, then drop it by crashing ales and lowering lagers per Brulosopher method. A few degrees like that probably makes little or no difference now.