Hello all,
I had a two brews in day brew day yesterday. I made JZ's evil twin as well as his Robust Porter. Both recipes call for the American Ale or 1056 from Wyeast which is what I used. I have an unfinished room in my house that is in the downstairs area so naturally the temps are a little cooler down there than in the upstairs area. I do my best to track the temp in the room. I have two thermometers in the room, one at eye level and one on the floor and they generally read a couple of degrees apart.
Anyway, right now the temp on the floor is hovering around 64 degrees. The Porter is up and running just fine, lots of (slow but consistent) activity but the Evil Twin is not. It's been around 24 hours at this point so I'm a little concerned. My question is, how cold is too cold for this ale strain? I was thinking that if I pitched at this temp, when the fermentation gets going the temp of the wort will rise to be pretty close to the sweet spot. But I'm wondering if after the most concentrated and 'heated' fermentation (no pun intended) does the wort cool back down which may keep the yeast from finishing their job because the wort gets a little too cold to ensure complete fermentation. In other words, I'm not worried so much about no fermentation but I am worried about complete fermentation.
I have both the primaries in plastic tubs that I wrapped with some insulation stuff (technical term). I also took a 4x8 sheet of some other kind of insulation stuff and made lids for the tubs (I tried to post a pic but the file is too large, how do I shrink the file size of a pic?). I have the evil twin now wrapped in some old sheets that SWMBO gave me for this very purpose. If I have two I can add some water to the tubs and use an aquarium heater to bring the temp to around 68 if I have too but that is a little bit of a pain in the rear and I was hoping that I could get away with letting them ferment in a room that's hovering around the 64 degree mark.
I had a two brews in day brew day yesterday. I made JZ's evil twin as well as his Robust Porter. Both recipes call for the American Ale or 1056 from Wyeast which is what I used. I have an unfinished room in my house that is in the downstairs area so naturally the temps are a little cooler down there than in the upstairs area. I do my best to track the temp in the room. I have two thermometers in the room, one at eye level and one on the floor and they generally read a couple of degrees apart.
Anyway, right now the temp on the floor is hovering around 64 degrees. The Porter is up and running just fine, lots of (slow but consistent) activity but the Evil Twin is not. It's been around 24 hours at this point so I'm a little concerned. My question is, how cold is too cold for this ale strain? I was thinking that if I pitched at this temp, when the fermentation gets going the temp of the wort will rise to be pretty close to the sweet spot. But I'm wondering if after the most concentrated and 'heated' fermentation (no pun intended) does the wort cool back down which may keep the yeast from finishing their job because the wort gets a little too cold to ensure complete fermentation. In other words, I'm not worried so much about no fermentation but I am worried about complete fermentation.
I have both the primaries in plastic tubs that I wrapped with some insulation stuff (technical term). I also took a 4x8 sheet of some other kind of insulation stuff and made lids for the tubs (I tried to post a pic but the file is too large, how do I shrink the file size of a pic?). I have the evil twin now wrapped in some old sheets that SWMBO gave me for this very purpose. If I have two I can add some water to the tubs and use an aquarium heater to bring the temp to around 68 if I have too but that is a little bit of a pain in the rear and I was hoping that I could get away with letting them ferment in a room that's hovering around the 64 degree mark.
