I always use a secondary fermenter for all my brews in an attempt to clear the beer. My feeling is the colder the better to drop out the yeast. Sometimes I have found that the temps in the fermenter can change between 10 to 20 degrees. Does this temperature change have an effect on taste or overall quality of the beer?
BV
How do you know the temperature is moving from 10-20 degrees? Beer (as water does) has quite the thermal mass and I would be surprised if the actual temperature of your beer itself moved that much in one day, unless it is extremely cold or extremely hot where you live. Colder is most definitely better for finished beer, as warmer temps will stale the flavors faster.
Where are you keeping your secondary fermentors?
I suppose I question the need of secondary vessel if you are simply cold crashing the beer, I just do this in primary a few days after reaching final gravity. I simply drop the temp to 35 and let the beer clear over a few to several days and then keg it.
10-20 degree temp shifts seem pretty extreme, I’ve never seen anything more than a few degrees when I didn’t have a ferm chamber
Simple answer is no, but as the others said: Ambient temp won’t necessarily affect thermal mass of liquid as quickly and really isn’t necessary to use a secondary for every beer, especially if just cold crashing. You can get the beer jst as clear on the yeast and risk less oxygen exposure. But if you are purging your secondary with Co2 then there is no reason why you can’t do a secondary.
I keep the vessel under a window that is cracked open about an inch. When the blind is drawn, the cold air pours down directly on the glass carboy. If it’s 20 degrees outside, the vessel get’s cold pretty fast. I have a temperature strip on the side of the carboy and I know there is a four degree difference from my probe thermometer.
Sometimes the room gets too cold and my wife complains about it. That’s when I have to close the window and the carboy doesn’t keep a consistent cool temperature.
Get one of those big tubs from Target or Walmart, place the carboy in it and fill with cold water and frozen water bottles to maintain a more constant temp
Did it for a long time before I bought a fridge and controller. Worked pretty well.
Likewise, a very simple, tried and true method of temp control, and cheap!
I made a few lagers that way that had judging comments of ‘clean fermentation’. So it must’ve worked fairly well !
+1 to frozen water bottles - even with two beer chests for fermenting and lagering, I always keep a few around to use in any number of ways in brewing (frequently to drop strike water temperatures when I overshoot the mark - doing too many things at once on a brew morning!)