re: Homebrewing: In-Process Thread

Need some advice from the experienced brewers about consistent temps during primary fermentation.

We currently have a pale ale on tap in our kegerator that we might finish pretty soon because we like it so much. The problem is that we use our kegerator as a fermentation fridge when we are not serving out of it.

I'd like to brew this weekend so we can leave a beer in a fermentor while we are out of town for the holidays (2 weeks), but the kegerator may not be empty by Monday (although the challenge might be accepted...).

If the beer stays at room temp (which will fluctuate mostly between 65 and 75) for about 10 days in the primary, what kind of negative impact could we see? I could set it in a bath tub with a swamp cooler, but if the temp drops outside, I'm not going to run my heater to keep my carboy temp up, so room temp could get down to ~60ish. There would just be no easy way to keep the temp constant over that time period although I could probably keep it in a decent range (60-70) with a swamp cooler.

Hopefully we would finish the pale ale by the time we would leave for the holidays and we could put the porter in the kegerator for the rest of fermentation.

FYI - this would probably be a porter from Northern Homebrew since a friend gave us a kit he didnt want to brew LINK