Temerature

[Peter Dear]

Hey, i'm very new to home brewing, and have my first one on now.
i'm struggling to keep the temperature above about 15c. i understand that 18-30c is recommended.
any tips/hints?

thanks
pete

[RopenutS]

Wicked! Cheers pal

[Peter Dear]

hey,

first brew was very successful and tastes good. not sure on alcohol % as i didnt take a reading beforehand -oooops!

i just bottled a cider i made and the original gravity reading was 1.028 at approx 25c, and the final gravity reading was 1.012 at approx 18c.
now, using the basic formula i worked out that my cider would be about 2%abv. this correct, or does temperature play a part, and more conversions required? cheeers guys!

[denimglen]

Sounds about right, you can make an extremely rough calc of the alc%% by the last two numbers of the OG - 1.050 - around 5%, 1.045 around 4.5%.

Temperature only plays a part if your fermentation got really cold and the yeast stopped fermenting.

1.012 sounds quite high for a cider, seeing as there's little unfermentables in apple juice and especially with a low OG like that, I would expect that to finish at about 1.000 - 1.004 or something. Got a recipe for us?

[Peter Dear]

i wish i had something more to report than i used a black rock nz cider kit from great expectations in lower hutt. the label reckoned i should be aiming for 1.008, but it stayed at 1.012 for 4 days at a consistent 23c.

do you think i should have stirred it and let it sit for another week?? it had sat in the fermenter for about 2 weeks!?!?!?

the samples i took for the gravity readings actually tasted pretty good, and theyve cleared up nicely during secondary fermentation.

ill let you know how they taste in a cpl of weeks!