Fermenting tempreture

[morebeer]

Hi all

Its usually suggested to ferment at 20 deg.for a standard ale.
My question is,are they refering to the ambient tempreture or the tempreture of the actual fermenting beer.
The reason i ask is the brew i made yesterday which is sitting in my downstairs room with a ambient temp. of 19 deg.and happily fermenting away is reading 25 deg.on the stick on thermometer on the side of the F.V.which i have also checked with my glass thermometer which also shows 25 deg.
I no that fermenting generates heat but should i be trying to bring the tempreture down or leave well alone.
After two years of all grain brewing i feel this is the one area that i still have not got to grips with properly.

Many thanks in advance

[gnorwebthgimi]

I wouldn't read much into the thermometer on the side of the FV even if you did say you checked it.

Technically it's the temperature of the fermentation not the surroundings that is important. It is normal for the fermentation to be 2'c above the ambient temperature.

I'm surprised your fermentation is 6'c above the ambient temperature, which makes me doubt the reading is accurate unless it's not finished cooling fully after the boil.

25'c is usually fine fine almost all ale yeasts to begin with for a few hours or half a day, but after that you should get the temperature down.

I think so long as the ambient temperature is stable at 19'c you should be fine, unless somehow the FV is being heated up to 25'c as you said, in which case you are fermenting at a temperature where depending upon the yeast you could end up with fusel alcohols or off flavours.

My advice is to recheck that temperature a day or so into the fermentation.

[gnorwebthgimi]

When I did my first beer ages ago I made a kit ale and fermented it in the airing cupboard at about 30'c.

That created noticeable fusel alcohols, but was probably the kit ale I enjoyed the most, even if it was nothing like proper beer.

I've been meaning to give that a go again with an AG.

I did try and make a wheat beer with as many estery flavours as possible by fermenting on the warm side (24'c ambient temperature) but got no fusels and no esters and it tasted more like lager than wheat beer

[morebeer]

Thanks for the reply gnorwebthgimi.
After reading your reply i checked the temperatures again.the stick on thermometer is still showing 25 deg.even though the room temp. is 18 deg.and when i checked the beer temp.with my glass thermometer it shows 19.5 deg.So all would seem well and much as you suggested in your reply.

[gnorwebthgimi]

I hope you sanitised that thermometer before poking it into your beer!

When fermenting I just trust that the yeast does it's job and leave it for 5 days before opening it to check the yeast head has died and take the first post fermentation hydrometer reading. Then take a reading every 24 hours until I get two consecutive readings.

Patience is almost the only thing at your disposal after you pitch the yeast.