Gittin' 'er done

[FedoraDave]

So I have a fiver of FedoraDave's American Ale that I plan on bottling Saturday. I dry hopped it last night. And I wanted to cold crash it.

Now, my basement has been too cold for fermenting an ale, being in the mid-to-high 50s during this hideous weather, so I brought the carboy up into the beer closet, where it was in the low 70s. A pretty good temperature for the WLP001, and it fermented nicely.

But I have no room in my lager fridge, because I've got a lager in there finishing up after the D-rest. Gonna be at least another week. So I just schlepped the fiver down to the basement and set it on the concrete slab floor, instead of the bench I usually keep my carboys on. I figure that'll make the temperature sink into the low 50s, at least.

I kind of like that I had to do this. It's making beer by adapting to the conditions that prevail, which is how it was done for centuries before the Industrial Revolution and microbiology and all that stuff. Not that it's going to be better for it, but just.... Well, I guess it's a case of Beer Will Out.

And that's pretty neat.

[jimjohson]

necessity, the mother of invention . good idea Dave

[John Sand]

I have similar issues, and no beer fridge. I try to work with ambient temps in different parts of the house. Right now I'm thinking of where to ferment my next batch. The basement is too cold, maybe the upstairs hall? I have to consult my wife. She's very good about my brewing, and I want to keep it that way.

[Chuck N]

I too have no beer fridge. I have a bead-board box that I custom made to put my five gallon buckets in and maintain fermenting temps using hot-water bottles in the winter and ice-packs in the summer. To "cold-crash" in the winter I simply remove the box from over the bucket and in the summer I put - and rotate - about a dozen ice-packs in the box with the bucket. This gets the temp down to about the low fifties. Not really cold enough to do a proper cold-crash but it helps to settle out a lot of the sediment and then as I rack into the bottling bucket I use my auto-siphon to take the beer off the top to keep from getting the vast majority of the sediment in the bottling bucket.

[FedoraDave]

I don't think I'm going to get a proper cold crash, either. The temp when I got home from work today was only in the high 50s. But I imagine it'll settle some of the stuff out, and, like Chuck, I'll be siphoning carefully to avoid sucking up too much of the sediment.

[John Sand]

You might Dave. I had to bring my last batch upstairs to finish, and the trub was pretty compact. Of course, I did use S04. My basement is 55 now, only about 58 even next to the heater.

[FedoraDave]

Well, it's a moot point now. That batch is in the bottles. I'm looking forward to drinking this one.