Help! Fermentation temp issues...

[nightporter]

Just brewed my very first batch on Sunday. It is a Robust Porter. The starting gravity was 1.070 I pitched 2 packets of Nottingham dry english yeast (I was afraid they were past there prime) at 66 degrees. then put it in my dark room where oddly enough the temp. was 66.6 degrees and left it over night. checked in the morning 15 hours later 0 activity. 24 hours the temp is then 64 degrees 0 activity. Texted a friend and he said wow that is a long time. So he had me bring it out and warm it up. So I left it and went out came back the temp was 68 and saw the first bubbles in the airlock then 31 hours later. I left it overnight and the fermentation took off. The weather was going to get hot yesterday so I moved it back down to the dark room and left it. when I came home 8 hours later the room temp was 68 and the temp strip on the fermenter was 72! I filled the sink up with cold water and wrapped a wet towel around it. The temp has now been holding steady around 70 and activity in the airlock is slowing down now. What should I do next? What do you think is gonna happen to the beer?

[Blowmax10]

Relax man - its not Ideal but your beer is going to turn out fine - especially a porter

Did you rehydrate the dry yeast? Did you oxygenate your cooled wort?

If the answer is no then this is most likely reason that it took so long to show signs of fermentation

again, not ideal but not a game breaker

keep your beer at a constant temp even if that is A few degrees above or below your target

In a couple of months you will be enjoying a great glass of porter on a winter night - one of my favorite combinations!!

[OneHoppyGuy]

Congrats on your first batch!!

68 to 70 is still in range. The fluctuation in temperature will affect the yeast's performance and the final flavor outcome. Here's a link to a BYO article on the subject:
http://www.byo.com/stories/issue/articl ... techniques

I found chest freezers on craigslist. Look on craigslist for a chest freezer, I got one chest freezer for free and the other for $45. I use one for fermenting and the other for serving. I am using Ranco temp controllers currently.

OHG
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[leftnut]

Congrats on your first batch! Don't stress dude, your beer is gonna be fine. Listen to the brewstrong episode about temp control, lots of good info there.

[Bugeater]

I will echo the you will be fine answers. Yeast fermentation is exothermic (there, I got my big word out of my system for the day. ) and will produce a bunch of heat on it's own. The warmer the beer when fermentation starts, the bigger the jump in temperature. Also, the higher the gravity, the warmer it will get. Thus, once fermentation starts, you want the ambient temperature to be lower than your desired fermentation temperature. On big beers the rise can be as much as 8-10 degrees.

Wayne

[nightporter]

Hey thanks to everyone for the help and the encouragement. I quickly realized that temperature control is going to be my next serious focus. I'm curious though how much heat can the fermentation actually produce? It's something that I didn't even think about. But again thanks I'm no longer freaking out.

[nightporter]

Hey thanks Wayne awesome information!

[brewinhard]

In my experience dark style ales (stouts, porters) tend to mask many off flavors from a out of control fermentation. Your porter will most likely be delicious especially after a bit of cool aging and at 1070 you probably will want it to mellow out a bit. 72 degrees shouldn't throw too many fusel alcohols into the beer especially if you got it under control as soon as you could (earlier than later).

I brewed up one of my best RIS a few years back and pitched the wort (that I could only cool down to 78 degrees b/c of summer) directly onto a yeast cake. Crazy fermentation and very messy with fermentation temps roaring at the low 70's. The beer went on to medal in many comps (1st, 2nd, and 3rd BOS) after 1 and even 2 yrs went by. Just goes to show that even when you think you fuck up a beer sometimes they become the tastiest ones!