Yesterday was bottling day for the Brown Porter and this time around, we threw in a little experiment. Bottling can be boring so we sometimes like to throw a smidge of excitement. Just a smidge.
As described in our priming sugar experiment post, we split the beer into two different bottling buckets with two separate priming sugars. One bucket had corn sugar in it, the other had KreamyX. Each priming sugar was weighed and measured for 2.5 gallons and not the standard 5 gallon quantities.
Bottling went on without a hitch. Our friend Lyle was there to help out and was rewarded taking half the bottles home.
Our final gravity was 1.016, a little high from where I wanted it to be (1.011). Then again, our starting gravity was higher than the predicted gravity: (1.052 vs 1.047). We tasted the sample and it didn’t repulse us.
Now we wait. All bottles have been labeled as either a KreamyX bottle or not. We will crack a few open 2 weeks from now and see.
LB
So, I took half of this brew home, 12 large bottles, 6 Kreamy X and 6 corn sugar primed. My house is typically cold at night and during the day when the heat is off (as low as 58). I wanted to maintain a warmer temperature and one that was even so I wrapped the box of brew in a blanket and set it on a heating pad on the lowest setting. Overnight I thought I had done pretty well — internal box temp was 69 degrees this morning. But by 5pm this evening, 12 hours later, we were at 74. I am attempting now to cool the brew with more insulation between heating pad and box. How hot is too hot? How cold is too cold? How much does it matter?
Mike
74F should be fine for bottle conditioning at this point. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
Subjecting the yeast to too many cycles of up and down temps may get them to poop out early. For conditioning it’ll be fine if you just try and keep it in that 70-74 range.
No worries.
LB
Okay, I’ve toned it down a bit to around 69 degrees and it seems to stay at 69 whether the house temp is 60 or 65. I think it will remain stable there for the coming weeks. Thanks