conditioning Temps

[Hudson1984]

Hi all, yes me again :)

so, conditioning...

lots of my kits suggest "warm" or "cold" for conditioning. my query is what's warm and what counts as cold?

I mean the cider kit suggested cold, so it's sitting in the keg in the fridge. Wine seems to want warm - so how warm we talking?

I don't have room for another brew fridge - so I'm really considering one of these:

https://www.geterbrewed.com/ferminator-basic/
this can happily sit on a space on my worktop, and probably be used to ferment, allowing me to get a conical (which wont fit it my brew fridge) Then I can set the brew fridge to a suitable conditioning temp and i'm away - or vice versa. Although this thing is much better than my brew fridge! so may in the future end up with two of these on the worktop and get rid of the brew fridge.

anyway. what temps are you using?

 

[Hudson1984]

Any thoughts?

 

[BrewMeHappy]

I keep my brews in a cupboard which has the airing cupboard off it, which is pretty much 20deg all year round if I keep the door to the airing cupboard closed and perhaps upto about 22deg with the door open.

I brew in there and keep my stash in there until I needed it then pop a few bottles into the fridge.

 

[Spratt]

To be honest, I suspect "conditioning" is one of those words that can mean all things to all men. Once your beer is out of the fermenting vessel and into a bottle/pressure barrel, it will need time in a a warm place (the proverbial room temperature) for the bottle/keg priming sugar to be activated by the little yeast there is left, to carbonate the beer. I always give it a fortnight if I can, regardless of the type of beer -lager, stout, IPA, they all get the same amount of time at the same temperature, which is usually between 18 and 22. Once that fortnight is up, I transfer them, again whatever the beer style, to my shed which is always cooler, though in summer only marginally so, for at least another fortnight before I start to drink them. In winter their temperature may drop down to 8 or 9 and in summer it may go as high as 20 again, but I always feel the extra time improves them.

Then, if I've managed to leave them for that long, I'll put them in the fridge for a couple of days if a lager or, again depending on time of year, serve them at shed temperature. There are a number of threads on here suggesting what is the "best" temperature to serve a beer, and actually it seems there are as many different views as there are beers. In one of the hot spells in the summer, I drank beer at 18c and thought it was close to perfect but the air temp was 27 at the time.

One thing I would say is that you sometimes have to be patient with lagers. The first time I did a lager I followed the above procedure and when I tried my first bottle it was absolutely flat. That was in October and I rather forgot about those bottles until the following April when I tried one again. It was perfect, just the right amount of fizz and extremely tasty.

 

[Hudson1984]

Thanks that’s really useful. Think my ciders destined to be doomed then, the kit said cold so once it finished fermenting it had sugar and went into the fridge. See how that turns out! It went into a keg a week and a half ago, I’ve no plans to drink it till Christmas. It’s on tap so I’m not worried about the carbonation too much. I’ll probably put the gas onto it a week before serving so it has time to carb up.....hopefully!

But I’ve got a wine kit fermenting at the moment, so will follow your advice, give that 2 weeks at “room temp” then a further two weeks in the garage. Once that’s done, I’ll chuck it in the kegerator with the cider

I’ve got a stout to do next so will follow the same pattern.

need to sort the temp in the garage...see my other thread :)

 

[Spratt]

Thanks that’s really useful. Think my ciders destined to be doomed then, the kit said cold so once it finished fermenting it had sugar and went into the fridge. See how that turns out! It went into a keg a week and a half ago, I’ve no plans to drink it till Christmas. It’s on tap so I’m not worried about the carbonation too much. I’ll probably put the gas onto it a week before serving so it has time to carb up.....hopefully!

But I’ve got a wine kit fermenting at the moment, so will follow your advice, give that 2 weeks at “room temp” then a further two weeks in the garage. Once that’s done, I’ll chuck it in the kegerator with the cider

I’ve got a stout to do next so will follow the same pattern.

need to sort the temp in the garage...see my other thread :)

I've not brewed wine since some pretty indifferent marrow wine in the 70s, so have no idea what rules apply to that

 

[Hudson1984]

Ah it’s only a kit, to be honest I didn’t leave it at room temp last time and it was fine, think it’s fairly forgiving in kit form

 

[terrym]

Thanks that’s really useful. Think my ciders destined to be doomed then, the kit said cold so once it finished fermenting it had sugar and went into the fridge. See how that turns out! It went into a keg a week and a half ago, I’ve no plans to drink it till Christmas. It’s on tap so I’m not worried about the carbonation too much. I’ll probably put the gas onto it a week before serving so it has time to carb up.....hopefully!

But I’ve got a wine kit fermenting at the moment, so will follow your advice, give that 2 weeks at “room temp” then a further two weeks in the garage. Once that’s done, I’ll chuck it in the kegerator with the cider

I’ve got a stout to do next so will follow the same pattern.

need to sort the temp in the garage...see my other thread :)

Why not move your cider into the warm for a couple of weeks? That will allow the yeast to get going and consume the priming sugar and carb up. Then you can move it back into the cold to condition ready for drinking.

 

[Hudson1984]

Ah ok, didn’t realise I could do that thought once you’ve moved a step that’s it. Will give it a couple of weeks in my office, that normally pretty warm

 

[terrym]

Ah ok, didn’t realise I could do that thought once you’ve moved a step that’s it. Will give it a couple of weeks in my office, that normally pretty warm

If you move it back into the warm give it swirl to redistribute the yeast, and as soon as the liquid gets to the right temperature the currently mostly dormant yeast will wake up and get going again.
And the advice often given to new brewers is to initially follow the 2+2+2 'rule'. That's two weeks in the FV which usually means its finished and the yeast has done any cleaning up and it's clearing, two weeks in the warm to carbonate after packaging and two weeks conditioning in a cool place if you have one before you sample to see if its better than only just drinkable, although it might need longer. I don't normally make cider but did a Turbo Cider some time ago and that was only drinkable after about six months much like 'proper' cider.