have I killed my beer?

[marcarm]

I brewed on Friday and it went straight into the brew fridge on Friday night.

Checked all was well on Saturday and there was a nice krausen forming, however when I went to the garage on Sunday I noticed something was up with the temp reading. Opened the fridge and found the probe had fallen off the FV, it's normally kept there under insulation with tape, but it had come off. The probe was reading the air temp inside the fridge.

Now the beer does not have any form of krausen, there looks to be some yeast clumping on the surface but the beer looks really murky, like light brown gravy

I'm not sure how hot/cold the beer would have got in the fridge when the probe had fallen off, but I'm sure that the temp couldn't have got hot/cold enough to have killed the yeast?

The fridge is set for 19C and has been sitting in that range since yesterday morning.

The plan is to leave it for 2 weeks but I'm hoping that it isn't ruined.

[Leebo87]

I suspect it will be fine. It's not unusual for the krausen formed by some yeasts to drop quickly. Take a hydrometer reading over a couple of days. If the readings still high and isn't moving, a good yeast rousing will probably get it going again. If that doesn't work there's still hope, you can repitch some fresh yeast.

Hope that helps, Lee

[marcarm]

Cheers, I was going to leave it a few days and see what happens. Least it's out in the garage so I can forget about it for a while

[Leebo87]

The hardest part of brewing is leaving it alone Good luck.

[Wonkydonkey]

If it's just got cold, then a bit of warmth will wake them up, if it's got hot ( more than 24 c) then I guess they have been baked,

But I'm guessing it's not the latter this time of year.

I also thought most peeps put a small jar of water with the temp prob in it, so you get the liquid temp not the air temp.

[DerbyshireNick]

I like myth busting so once did a "in wort" and "in fridge" temperature comparison. What I found was that while generally the wort sat a little warmer than the air temperature the largest delta was during heavy fermentation at about 1 c. i.e. the air was 20 and the wort was around 21c.

Keep in mind that the ATC jobbie most of us use as a 1c swing anyway. i.e. if its set to 20, heat doesn't kick in again until the reading drops to 19 and ditto, cooling doesn't kick in until it reads 21c.

Now... maybe its just me... but... if that is being controlled by the true temperature of the wort once the temperature drops to our theoretical 19 it will heat until the wort has reached 21 before switching off. So the wort is being heated and cooled by up to 2c all the time! maybe we are better off providing a consistent environment by controlling the air temperature inside the fridge at a little below target which given the lag of the liquid to follow the change in air temperature will provide a pretty static wort temperature. These musings lead me to stick my probe to the side of the bucket but not insulated.

Maybe its just me going mad though....

My point in relation to your post: If you were controlling the temperature of the environmental air inside your brewfridge... don't give it a second thought. It will be fine!

[marcarm]

Thanks for the reassurance, I just checked a sample and it's down to 1.020 from 1.050 already so something is happening. I'm sure it couldn't have got too hot in there as the air temp would change faster than the wort temp, so the heater would have switched off before it got too hot.

I have set my STC to a 0.5 degree tolerance, think that was the default when I got it so left it as is and have had good results with it so far.

Going to leave it now at least until Sunday before checking again. It's very murky and the sample didn't taste wonderful, but I think that is to be expected at this stage of it's life.

[Wonkydonkey]

I like myth busting so once did a "in wort" and "in fridge" temperature comparison. What I found was that while generally the wort sat a little warmer than the air temperature the largest delta was during heavy fermentation at about 1 c. i.e. the air was 20 and the wort was around 21c.

Keep in mind that the ATC jobbie most of us use as a 1c swing anyway. i.e. if its set to 20, heat doesn't kick in again until the reading drops to 19 and ditto, cooling doesn't kick in until it reads 21c.

Now... maybe its just me... but... if that is being controlled by the true temperature of the wort once the temperature drops to our theoretical 19 it will heat until the wort has reached 21 before switching off. So the wort is being heated and cooled by up to 2c all the time! maybe we are better off providing a consistent environment by controlling the air temperature inside the fridge at a little below target which given the lag of the liquid to follow the change in air temperature will provide a pretty static wort temperature. These musings lead me to stick my probe to the side of the bucket but not insulated.

Maybe its just me going mad though....

My point in relation to your post: If you were controlling the temperature of the environmental air inside your brewfridge... don't give it a second thought. It will be fine!

I think I know what your talking about, it's a bit early and I have not had a beer yet.
I agree that wort fermetning produces Heat, albeit a little. So the air temp and a jar of water will have a slightly dif temp to the wort fermenting. But I think of the type of person who opens the door a lot would have a reading that's not steady.

But anyway if you know this then you can make your fine tuning to get the result that your looking for.
Ps I only said put prob in jar of water so it could not fall off the FV

[DerbyshireNick]

No, I concur wonkey.

The amount of times I have walked into the kitchen and seen a black wire with a blob on the end of the floor and panicked. Fortunately every time it has just been a phone charger plugged into the socket next to my brew fridge...


Interesting that the controller goes down to a 0.5c tolerance. Mine I am pretty sure only goes to 1. Might have to replace it if newer ones have a narrower swing, just for my OCD.