Malted Grains And Temperature Fermentation

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Brenn Gunn

Member
Joined
2/7/11
Messages
20
Reaction score
1
Hi all, I began all grain brewing last Christmas, and have found 1 major problem and 1 minor problem that I think that I need to solve.

The minor problem is that I am confused by the amount of malted grains from various malteries from around the world.(particularly the specialty grains) I would like to know if anyone knows of a book which, details the products of the worlds major malsters and suggest the best possible substitutes for their competitors product with their own.

The major broblem that I have encounted is that of excessive brewing temperatures during this past summer. (a few brews were fermented at high 20's to 30+ c and were frown out because of an excessively 'clove' like flavor. I would like to build a 'Coolroom' under my house and would like to know if anyone knows of a place to buy cheap coldroom panels in the Ipswich/Brisbane area, or advise me of other materials that I could use to build this room. I already know about the refrigerators/freezer conversions but would prefer to build a room as i could also lager my kegs there.

Any constuctive advice is appreciated. thanks.

Brenn
 
I'm not sure a large coolroom is as useful for a home-brewer (who makes, serves and produces multiple different kinds of beer) because you generally want to use a range of temperatures for a range of purposes (unlike a commercial brewery who would concentrate only on a limited number of products requiring the same conditions).

As examples - for a home brewer, you might want to have beer at each of these temperatures at the same time:
10C fermenting lagers
20C fermenting ales
0C lagering/cold conditioning
6C serving temps

So while you could have a large room, having multiple smaller fridges/freezers each independently controlled - would iMHO be a better option for most home-brewers. That way you can have your kegged/bottled beer at serving temps, have other beer lagering/cold conditioning while you are brewing an ale and/or lager at the same time. Depending on how much you brew, a single serving fridge and another fermeting fridge might be enough. A single temperature large coolroom would not allow that flexibility.
 
I got three cheap fridges off eBay and giveaways got 3 x STC1000 all up cost under $150 Set up as fermenting fridge, lagering fridge & serving fridge.

Great too if i want to ferment a Lager and an ale at the same time.
 
Well thanks for the replys,, I have the coolroom panels (enough for 2m X 3m {not a big room, as I had always planned to build an even smaller room}). I have coolroom refrigeration compressor and evaporator ect.. the room will be kept at 18C ,, I am building a 'hutch' which will have enough room for 2 fermenters and uses an external danfoss compressor and evaporator to keep it at a 10C temp. The whole idea was that it had to be cheaper than running multi refrigerators (power wise) and I have room for my 16 kegs to keep at 18c... It gets to 36c+ here and although the kegs are not 0c lagering,, it has to be better than letting them sit at that temperature.
 
Search grain comparison chart. Should give u a good start
 
I can't imagine that 2 or 3 standard refrigerators run intermittently (fermenting and beer serving temperature is much higher than fridges usually run) and only while fermenting/storing beer, will be cheaper than 2x industrial compressors running all the time, cooling a large (in comparison to a fridge) volume of space.
 
the main compressor keeps a 18c environment... the second compressor only cools an environment from 18c to 10c,, it is only a "display case" compressor.. it also only has to cool a variable of 8c a refrigerator is cooling a variable of upto 15c+ the kegs will be kept at 18c and not 36c+ during summer.. or is it better i leave them at 36?
 

Latest posts

Back
Top