Hey everyone, I am a bit OCD with my first batch and trying to get the right room temperature in my NYC apartment has proven difficult. The Air temperature has been reading 76 degree the last 8 days but with the recent heat wave I thought it would be safer to lower my wort temperature by placing the carboy in a cooler with two ice packs. Within 8 hours the yeast appears to have gone dormant as bubbling has ceased. Will removing the ice packs, and allowing the room temperature to slowly warm the wort allow the yeast to reactivate? I am using the starter kid by Brooklyn Brew Shop. It is a brown ale. Thank you so much. @CA_LeBron
Did you get a temp reading inside your cooler? Are you fermenting in a carboy so that you can see the wort, or are you fermenting in a bucket? Don't open the lid to look if it's a bucket because it's too soon to do much of anything because you don't want to disturb your beer needlessly until you know better that something is an issue. However, you could check to see that the airlock is firmly in place, or that your lid is firmly on the bucket if a bucket is what you are using. Both of those conditions can allow air to escape the fermentor without showing any bubbling action in the airlock.
you need to measure wort temperature, not air temp. it is unlikely two ice packs in a cooler did too much. don't worry about it though. temp control can be a real hassle if you don't have a special fridge with an outboard thermostat. brewers traditionally avoided, or were prohibited, from making beer during the hot summer months. been like that for a thousand years. actively fermenting wort can be as high as 5 degrees warmer than ambient air. measure your gravity to determine if fermentation is complete. bubbles and yeast activity are next to meaningless when it comes to knowing what your yeast are doing. you must check your gravity. 76 degrees for fermentation, depending on the yeast strain, is not ideal but not terrible either. your beer will probably have a bit of diacetyl, which is going to be your first real brewing experience. tell your friends "yeah, it's got a bit of diacetyl that contributes to the character". look it up. Cheers.
This is a Brooklyn Brew Shop product. So I'm guessing it's fermenting in a one gallon jug? In which case its temperature would be more subject to swings than @billandsuz is thinking. I'm guessing a one gallon jug would ferment pretty quickly in any case, so there is a decent chance the fermentation is simply finished. Personally I would remove the ice packs, wait a week or two, test the gravity, and bottle.
I usually add water to a cooler or a large Tupperware when I use a swamp cooler for temp control. I can measure the water temp and be pretty sure that the fermentation is within a degree or two of that. (I've checked both numerous times in the past). As for the air lock activity, it's good to see that you have an active fermentation and an air tight seal around your fermenter. Now let it do its thing for a few weeks and get ready to take some gravity readings and bottle.
