Ok thankyou for your response. I didn’t worry too much about the temperature because I thought the grainfather would do this for me. I’m wondering if the temperature was a little high at 23 degrees but perhaps I should trst it with the thermomenter next time to check it is regulating properly
23 Celsius for fermentation would be a bit high for an ale: typically controlling fermentation temps during the first 3-4 days is important in final product. Generally 62- 68 * Fahrenheit is a sweet spot for ales. I like to go on the cool side. 62-64*
I took a look at the recipe again. Don’t know how I missed it but the yeast is an English ale yeast. English strains drop out fast as the temperature of the beer begins decreasing as fermentation activity declines. I once bottled a beer that remained at 1.018 for two weeks. Four or five weeks later I noticed the carbonation increasing. Disturbing some of the yeast during bottling and the warm conditioning temperature got the yeast active again. Had the same problem with a porter that dropped 7 gravity points after bottling.
Try rousing the yeast with a long sanitized spoon and warm the fermentor a degree or two over what it has been at for the last week. This may reactivate the yeast that remains in the fermentor.
I now maintain the highest temperature reached during active fermentation until I’m ready to bottle. Bottling is not less than three weeks from the beginning of fermentation activity.
Thanks so much for your help. I’ll give it a try. I may have made things worse by lowering the temperature to 20 degrees thinking it was a bit high. Brilliant help on the forum. Was completely at a loss for what to do!
After the first 3-5 days of active fermentation, as @flars said allowing the temp to rise is fine. The main work of the yeast is done by then, and the remainder of fermentation is the yeast cleaning up after itself, clarifying, etc…Lowering the temp as you did later likely didn’t hurt anything.
I’ve done some reading on the grandfather fermenter. It does tell you to dump some yeast periodically during fermentation. I will assume you are on a different continent, so, keeping ale on the cool side could be as easy as being to run cool tap water through the jacket a couple times a day, being as the fermenter is insulated. Yeast isn’t as fussy as the talk sez… But when you can find its sweet spot, you’ll be amazed just how much more of an improvement your brews will have! We talk F*, and you use C*… So from our perspective 62*-67*, controlled ferment is great… For some of the usual suspects… There are different strains that ferment at different temps for a desired flavor… Let us know how your brew turns out! Sneezles61
No worries, we’ve all been new Brewers and didn’t understand one thing or another. Your efficiency is the amount of sugars you extract out of the grains compared to the maximum available. If your efficiency is 80% and the recipe is based on 70% you’ll extract more sugars and have a higher SG, thus a higher ABV.
@flars suggested fermentation temps as this results in hyperactive yeast. This produces off flavors, namely fusel alcohol which can create the sensation of higher level ABV. And can also result in a lower FG.
