brahn wrote:You can freeze some plastic bottles filled with water and add them to the water bath to bring the temperature down. With 2 2L bottles being rotated you should easily be able to keep the temp below 70.
Thank you. I may toss some ice cubes in the water as necessary.
Don't put ice in your actual beer. Just in a water bath around your beer. Freezers are not sanitary enough
Got it. My days of ice in the wort are way behind me.
Update on the Bitter Blonde: I cannot check the Fermometer temp as it is resting beneath the surface of the bleach water, but the t-shirt wicking continues, so I have to think that it's under 70 degrees in there.
Visible signs of fermentation did not start as quickly as with White Labs yeast based brews: it took about 5-6 hours for bubbling in the airlock to begin. Bubbling was at about 1 per second within 24 hours and continued at this pace for 2 days. It is now, on day 4, down to about 10 burps a minute. Good stuff.
Overall, thanks to the advice I received here, I appear to have solid fermentation occurring for a longer period of time than I did with other recent brews. Next step: checking the gravity when I rack to the secondary on Saturday.
