Bottle Conditioning in Brisbane

[#brewlife]

So I’ve been brewing like nuts on my newly built rig and am running out of fridge space.

My beer fridge is full and I’ve 2 x 25l batches coming of the yeast this week and wanted to ask people’s opinion/ experience with bottle conditioning at ambient temps in Brisbane? It’s pretty bl00dy hot atm and my brew space (room under the house) is sitting at about 26 degrees at the hottest part of the day when it’s 30+ outside.

I’ve always conditioned at fermentation temp but I’m out of space and planning to put another one down for New Years.

Any problems letting the bottles carb at ambient temps for 2 weeks until there’s room in the fridge to chill and drink?

On another note if I use pet bottles would it be better to squeeze all the oxygen out when bottling or just leave the usual space?

 

[Holden4th]

I can't see any issues with 25 degrees for conditioning your beer provided it's kept in a reasonably dark place.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Always better to condition at fermentation temperatures, and keep your beer below 20 degrees, over 20 degrees the beer starts to slowly deteriorate, depends on how fast you can drink it. The yeast will take up the oxygen while conditioning. There is a good podcast by Charlie Bamforth about temperature and beer.

 

[Cheap Drunk]

Could you just stand them upright in a tub and fill it with water? Obviously not too much though. It should achieve a more stable temp.

 

[fdsaasdf]

I'm in BNE and I keep my conditioning bottles in the coolest and darkest place possible under my house. Over 26 degrees is probably not going to be ideal. During heatwaves in the past I've kept mine cool in a small esky with a gel freezer pack but this probably isn't going to be doable for an entire batch. I have thought about keeping conditioning bottles in an esky but as secondary fermentation is going to be exothermic I am concerned this would actually cause a warmer environment than ambient if closed up for some time..

I always squeeze the headspace out of my PET bottles, but as I keg there are usually only 1 or 2 bottles per batch unless I've done something special like a sour or RIS.

 

[michael bourke]

Thanks