Is my room temperature OK for fermenting without extra heating?

[veersix]

Hi,

Almost ready to do my first brew and I've had a min/max thermometer setup in the room I plan on keeping my FV in. The temperature swings between 18 and 22 degrees celsius. The first beer I'm planning on doing is the Woodforde's Wherry kit to get me into the swing of things and test out parts of my kit before moving to BIAB.

My question is this. Will the room temperature be okay for fermenting in without having to provide extra heat to the FV? Will 18 degreees celsius be too low? I do have a heat pad so I could use that or I could wrap the FV in a sleeping bag or something.

Thanks.

 

[Ghillie]

Your beer will generate it's own heat during the most active stages of fermentation.

I like to keep my ales at a consistent 19-19.5C. You'll still make beer at the end of the day, so providing you can keep those temps within what you've quoted then you should be fine.

 

[terrym]

If you are fermenting your Wherry in the range 18-22*C that should be OK, ideally without too much temperature swing, although that's not essential. And if you can trust your heat pad to keep a steady and accurate temperature I would use that too, although it might not be brought into action too much. I would also aim for 19*C with that. But if you creep below 18*C the yeast starts to slow up although it will get going again when the ambient rises.
And if you want a cheap and easy way of controlling FV temperature you could do worse than try a water bath
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/how-to-set-up-a-water-bath-for-your-fv.66407/

 

[JonBrew]

Both of the above posts offer sound advice. The only point would add is that toward the later stages of fermentation the yeast will stop producing as much heat as they do at the beginning of the process. This can cause a sudden drop in temperature which can cause the yeast to drop out and stop working before they've finished the job. This is often the cause of stuck fermentations experienced by new brewers. I would suggest that after the first 3 days of active fermentation, or once you start to see signs that could indicate the fermentation is slowing down (such as less airlock activity), it would be a good idea to apply some heat to the FV, such as the heat pad you have and/or the sleeping bag/duvet etc, to keep the temp of the vessel at the higher end of your range.

 

[SteveH]

If you have a heat pad already it's worth considering getting an inkbird controller (they do heat and cool, but you can connect just the heat plug) - my daytime temperature is about the same as yours, but having logged the temperature during fermentation I could see it drops way lower overnight.

The inkbird plus a heat pad made the temperature way more stable, which I guess has to be a good thing - I got the ITC-308, dead simple to use and about £30 (or lower when on offer e.g on amazon)

 

[An Ankoù]

18-22 ambient is fine. As mentioned above, fermentation is exothermic so if you throw an old sleeping bag or a couple of bath towels over your fermenter, the liquid won't even go down to 18 until primary fermentation is just about done. Furthermore, if you're doing a W. Wherry from Wilco, that's a 5 gallon batch which is a fairly chunky mass of liquid and it won't drop to 18 as soon as your room temperature drops- or rise quickly, either. I reckon you'll be fine without having to resort to extra heating or cooling. When fermentation is finished, you might want to keep it at the warm end of the scale for a few days for the yeast to mop up its by-products, (diacetyl rest). But, if I remember right, there's a bit of diacetyl in Wherry, anyway.