The spare room/office is still pretty crowded from our recent move. We're slowly settling in. In the mean time, this room is the perfect place for the beer. The ambient temperature is 74 degrees, and I'm throwing water bottles in and out of the freezer every few hours to get a fermentation range in an un-measured temperature that's probably about eight to ten degrees cooler. (As I unpack more, my thermometer might appear out of a box, and I could really know for sure!)
I'm hoping for most of the flavor out of the Danstar Munich yeast, and along those lines, I'm not aiming for a clean fermentation. I underpitched on purpose to stress the yeast a little, and I'm letting it go on the warm side of its range to up the yeast's distinctive characteristics away from a super traditional weizen.
For me, one of the reasons I love the system of a fermentation bucket inside of a larger water bucket with ice bottles, is that it will make every batch just a little bit different, even with the same ingredients. I will never perfectly nail any one temperature, and every batch will be an adventure. I will never know exactly what will come out each time. I only know that when I'm close, it will be good. How good? The excitement of not really knowing exactly how good it will be fuels my excitement for the batch to ferment.
There's an excitement in a more manual and less-machine-like process. There's an adventure to it. Also, it's a lot cheaper than running a second fridge just for buckets of beer, and it gives me something to do to stay close to my beer, interacting with it and helping it along.
Swamp coolers are recommended for busy bodies like me that like to feel like they're always doing something!
Next Entry: More Roasting of Malts!
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