Question on fermentation temperature

Your description is typical for a beer fermented warmer than ideal. Yeast chewing through wort is an exothermic process and your fermenter will be warmer than the ambient room temp though probably not 10 degrees warmer. Your best easy solution would be to make a swamp cooler for evaporative cooling. Google homebrew swamp cooler to get an idea of the concept. You can keep it cool with frozen water bottles swapping them out as they melt. 5-6 days in this temp control becomes less necessary and it can even help to let it come up to room temp to let the yeast clean up after themselves before they flocc and fall to the bottom.

 

Assuming your beer kit is an ALE beer your fermentation temperature is fine.We need to know what :

Yeast used
OG
Beer Style
Why there was a ´booster´ in your kit and what kind of.

Your concern of fermentation temp. is nothing to worry about (Ale beer) , maybe this cidery taste comes from acetaldehyde(green apples) your beer is still too young.
You will need to age longer this beer in order to let acetaldehyde convert to ethanol and fusel alcohols(hot taste) converts to esters.

Please give a try here to start things up :

http://www.howtobrew.com/

This way you will be able to understand the whole process of brewing and the terminology I used above.

Good luck, wellcome abord !!

 

Sounds like a warm fermentation to me. Esters and fusel alcohols increase as fermentation temps increase. I have an old chest freezer with a temp controller, but prior to that I started fermentation in my basement and would bring the beers upstairs on day 3 to bring temps up a bit.

 

I don't know if you can say it's "nothing" to worry about. I have always gone by the rule of thumb of 10 degrees higher than ambient temp. So at the height of fermentation he might have hit 78 degrees. It all depends on the yeast strain and what the recommended temp is. Even if its not outside of the range a higher temp in the range will produce different flavors.

 

The increase in temperature of your wort follows the yeast activity as shown by this chart:


There are about a dozen variables that can shift the yeast activity to left/right/up/down . . . you control some and sometimes the yeast are in charge. The most accurate way to measure is to use a thermowell, not really practical for a Mr Beer. If you can measure the temp of the outside of the container (usually covered in something like bubble wrap) you can approximate wort temp. Lacking a ferm fridge, an ice bath does a respectable job. Your critical time is the first 72 hours after fermentation begins.

That said, once the yeast start to wind down you typically want to raise the temp (conditioning phase). Fermentation gives undesirable by-products . . . you have described "hot" alcohol and acetaldehyde, which are classic examples of not allowing the yeast to finish. Given time/temp, the yeasties will metabolize those nasties, that's why brewers don't want to rush fermentation. Here's what's going on in your primary:
https://www.morebeer.com/articles/conditioning

 

As others have mentioned it sounds like this batch was fermented too warm and for future batches you should take some steps to manage the temperatures like placing the fermentor in a water bath cooled with ice jugs or evaporative cooling.

“…my beer tastes "hot" …” That is an indicator of higher alcohols (fusel oils) which commonly are formed during warm/hot fermentations.

“…a bit "cidery"…” That could be due to the formation of acetaldehyde.

Further conditioning of this batch could help improve these matters.

For future batches, take steps to manage your fermentation temperatures.

Cheers!

 

Yeah for the record I had one beer that fermented way too hot. It was a 90 min IPA clone, that was a crazy mess and hectic brewday. Anyways it was a vigorous fermentation (only time i've ever blown the top) and it was the summer, and I didn't use a starter.

Needless to say it was HOT. Fusels my lord! After a month or so of aging it was one of my favorite beers I'd made. So yeah, if its too hot, let her sit..

 

Yup. Make sure to get a fermometer with your new brewing kit so that you can monitor the temperatures in the fermentor.

https://www.morebeer.com/products/fermometer-adhesive-thermometer.html

I would highly recommend that you purchase the book "How to Brew" by John Palmer along with that kit.

Well that confirms it; you definitely generated a lot of higher alcohols (fusel oils) with your warm/hot ferment. I am not sure how long it will take but hopefully the higher alcohols will diminish somewhat with bottle conditioning time. Maybe it would be prudent to restrict your drinking of this batch to one bottle per session?

Cheers!

 

Some, maybe even much, of the fusels might be converted to esters by whatever active yeast are left in the bottles. It depends on whether or not the yeast are in a state where they need the fusels and whether or not there are enough yeast cells. But other than conversion by yeast, there's no pathway I know of that removes fusels from beer.

Hopefully your beer's fusel issue will improve significantly. It sounded like you were under the impression that it will, but only time will tell. I'd suggest you keep the beer at room temp, which should help keep the yeast active. Cold temps slow down most biochemical yeast processes.

 

I think there is a new version coming out soon, it might make sense to wait a little bit vs. buying the old version. Homebrewing has changed a bit in the last 10 years.

 

June 1 per Amazon

https://smile.amazon.com/How-Brew-E...F8&qid=1490668608&sr=8-2&keywords=how+to+brew