Beer Forum

I have a beer fridge with a temperature controller that I usually use for a fermentation chamber. I can't let the fridge get to 60-70 degrees because I have some nice steaks in the freezer. I also don't have enough time to lager because I want to be able to bring it to the beach with me in a month.

So, anyone have any suggestions for a cold fermenting ale yeast or a quicker / cleaner fermenting lager yeast?


Cheers!

60-70° F sounds like a pretty reasonable range for ales. Even if you did a lager in the low 50's, you could do it in 1 month. There is a technique for doing it in 2 weeks...just look for Tasty's method or listen to a few episodes ago on the Session.

Anyway, if you want to stick to ales, you can do a really clean ale in the lower 60's with some American ale yeast (WLP001, 1056, US-05). I think the best thing would be to keep the temperature in a tight range, such as a 1-2° swing.

Or just cook the steaks, get a temperature controller, and forget about it. What's important here?

Nottingham dry yeast will easily ferment in the upper 50's....but you need to pitch more than normal..

Us-o5, both alt and kolsch yeasts will ferment clean and cool at 60F.

Another option is to provide heat to the fermenter in the fridge. My keezer doubles as a fermenter. I keep the Keezer around 40 and use a fermwrap around the bucket attached to a temp controller. I made an insulated jacket from reflectix that wraps around it and a lid that covers the top, seems to work well and not overstress the freezer so far.

Or you can try WLP810, I've gotten really nice clean beers using it at around 62F. It's got a nice restrained character for the most part, I really liked the blonde I did with it.

Wyeast 1007 German Ale. Great yeast.

Do a Berliner Weisse for a 3% Summer quaffer. And a 5% Kolsch.

The French Saison strain is a monster. I once forgot to set the proper temp on my fridge and it still chugged away in the 50's.