What are the advantages of fermenting ales at a lower temperature opposed to 70 ' s and up? IPAs for example
Cleaner beer. Less esters and fusels, which tend to get in the way of the focused-laserlike-hop-attack you want in a good American IPA.
Cleaner fermentation character... Controlled esters. Undetectable fusel levels. Relatively small differences in fermentation temps can have a relatively large influence on the biochemical pathways. I'm not saying you should agonize over the difference between 66F and 68F. But some do.
I agonize a little about the difference between 62F and 64F at times... for most ale styles the lowest temperature the yeast can get the job done at is the best.
I'm using a California ale yeast from white labs. This is my first time using a swamp cooler and I'm fermenting between 65-68F. I usually ferment at around 74. I'm hoping for a nice crisp and clean beer.
I just finished a cream ale about 2 weeks ago. I pitched a slurry of WLP001 and fermented at 62-64 for a week and then let it free rise to 68 and went for an additional week. Turned out to be a VERY clean and crisp brew. Tasted great. I'm a big fan of doing the bulk of active fermentation at the cool end and then kicking it up 4-5 degrees to clean up and would-be off flavors.
Please report back your experience. I use the dry version of WLP001: US-05. It has been my personal experience that US-05 is very neutral across a broad range of fermentation temperatures. The beers that I have fermented with US-05 in the low 70s had very, very low levels of esters and no perceptible higher alcohols (fusel oils). In other words my homebrewing experience with US-05 is that it is neutral across a broad range of fermentation temperatures. I have never brewed with WLP001 so I can't comment to how it performs across a range of fermentation temperatures. Cheers!
I am confident that WLP001 will perform admirably at a fermentation temperature of 65F. I would be curious on your perceptions of an IPA brewed with WLP001 at 65F vs. 70F for example. Cheers!
The recipe is fairly similar in comparison from the IPA I did at 74F. I will report back at around the day 7-10 mark with a taste test and how well it attenuated down.
I have brewed with US-05 in the low 70's (e.g., 70-72 degrees F) many times and I have never gotten a peach ester from those beers. As in many things, YMMV. There are lots of other variables in homebrewing beyond just fermentation temperature (e.g., amount of yeast pitched, amount of aeration (which is less important for dry yeast), health of the yeast, rehydrate vs. not re-hydrate, gravity of the beer, and on and on and on). Cheers!
I ferment anything with US05, 1056 or 001, at 63* and never let it move until I notice an decrease in krausen level, and allow it to rise to 68-69*, and let it sit. Once done, I raise to 71* dry hop, rack to keg, and keg hop at room temp before pulling hops, purging, and moving into the keezer for serving and carbing. I find it produces a peach ester at cooler temps, but it overall, extremely clean, no esters, and the yeast isn't anything you notice. For what it's worth, I find US05 to toss more peach/apricot at cooler temps than the liquid.
Supposedly first generation performance of dried yeast can be fairly different from subsequent performance and it's liquid equivalents once you start cropping it, mainly because of the way it's produced eg s04 being bready in it's first pitch then it loses that when cropped and repitched, it's then more like WLP007/Whitbread b And us05 giving relatively more peach in its first pitch to wlp001
