Ok…for some reason I thought you needed to keep the room warm during fermentation. I am brewing my first batch. Irish Red. It seemed to be doing very well…however its now been 4 days and the active fermentation seems to have stopped. Now I see that it should have been kept about 10 degrees cooler? Is my first batch going to be a flop? Can it be saved? I am moving it to a cooler area. Help!
There is an acronym you need to learn - RDWHAHB - Relax, Don’t Worry, Have a Homebrew. You are fine. Follow the instructions you have for your brew and enjoy your brew when it is done.
“Keep the room warm during fermentation” is all relative to what “warm” is. Right now I do have a space heater in my fermentation closet, since I’m in Seattle and I need to bump the temp up from 50 in the closet to 62 for fermentation. What temp did you have it at during the first 4 days of fermentation, and what temp did you move it to?
And yes, definitely RDWHAHB.
70 degrees for the first 4 days probably and then drops now to 60 to 65… and I will definitely need to do the whole RDLW…whatever that thing was basically relax soon as my first batch is DONE!
You’ll be fine. In my experience the taste threshold (at least mine) for off flavors is fermentation above 78, but this obviously depends on what yeast you’re using. I brewed for more than a year before I worried too much about fermentation temp, but luckily I had a basement at the time, so my fermentation temps were always 55-60 degrees depending on the time of year.
Read up on temperature control. If you have the room for it, fermentation fridge or chamber. I currently use a closet an unheated part of the house- space heater during winter and water bath/t-shirt during the summer. Both methods keep the temp in the low 60’s.
:cheers:
