Just dawned on me....

[OpenSights]

Last Monday I semi participated in a 250 gallon batch at the brewery down the street from me. Former club members gone pro. I stopped by the next morning and the blowoff tube was going crazy! They forgot to turn on the chiller. I thought it odd that the other three fermenters felt so cold on brew day, just figured they were laugering. Just dawned on me last night that a batch that large in one fermenter would produce far more heat during fermentation than our small 5 gallon batches.

Which makes me wonder if I need to rethink my plans when I finish my 10 gallon system. I don’t have a chamber to keep the beer at a cooler temperature. My basement stays in the low 60’s f in the summer, mid 50’s f in the winter.

RDWHAHB? Or should I look into investing in a fermentation chamber for when I start 10 gallon batches?

 

[RPh_Guy]

If you double your batch size, twice the amount of sugar means twice as much heat is generated. However, there's twice as much liquid to heat requiring twice as much heat to reach a particular temperature. So the beer temperature is unaffected by batch size with regard to how much heat is generated, because the liquid volume scales with the heat generation.

The actual problem lies in the fact that a larger fermentation vessel releases the heat to its surroundings much less efficiently because there is less surface area relative to the volume. Volume increases exponentially larger than surface area when scaled up.

I highly recommend some form of temperature control, regardless of batch size. This allows much greater control over the fermentation process.

 

[OpenSights]

Ok, that makes sense.

Logistics just got a bit harder. I have two old decommissioned half barrel sanke kegs for 10 gallon fermenters. Kinda makes me wonder about splitting a batch, which is planned for some already.

Guess once the dust settles in my office/brew side of the house I’ll have to look into something for a chamber.

Summer my house is 71f, winter 68f... other than the small basement.

 

[madscientist451]

An upright freezer would work with your sanke keg fermenter.
Or use a standard chest freezer get 2, 6.5 gallon plastic fermenters.
You'll get way better beer if you use temperature control.
You can keep using your ambient basement temperatures, but if you are up-scaling your brewing capacity, you might as well upgrade your fermentation equipment at the same time.
And if you get tired of brewing, you'll always have the freezer to store food in.
New freezers are pretty cheap right now, but you can always look on your local craigslist for bargains.

 

[bracconiere]

i'd say ales in the summer, lagers in the winter......

as far as 10 gals, i've never noticed a difference between my 10 or 5 gal batches....

(i do use a old fridge for temp control, when i care enough to care about it, though. they wanted $80 for it at a garage sale. but i don't have a basement that stays at perfect ferm temps...my indoor temps get to be 90f in the summer, lol...which is 10 months of the year)

 

[mongoose33]

You need to do fermentation temperature control. Period.

Ask the experienced brewers here: what was the biggest step forward in your brewing? A huge percentage will say "fermentation temperature control."

An upright freezer or refrigerator can work; so can other methods (glycol chiller). Heck, you can even make a "closet" out of OSB or whatever and cool it with a cheap window air conditioner.

 

[Dland]

You need to do fermentation temperature control.

I agree with this, but one way to do this is to brew lagers in cold months, and ales in the warm ones. This does assume a cool cellar and a climate not everyone has, to be sure. The cellar I use for beer is similar to Op's but might run a little cooler.

Of course I use some heat and temp control for D rests and such, but so far have not had to get into supplying cold side, which is separate infrastructure.

A refrigerated fermentor is would be great, I'd like to have one someday, but simplicity is a good thing too.

 

[eric19312]

Back to OPs question...volume does matter.. I think for same reason @RPh_Guy mentioned. When I went from 2x5.5 gallon ferments to 1x16 gallon in same chamber I really noticed I needed to improve my temp control strategy. What works fine for smaller fermentor was not good enough anymore.

 

[Loud Brewing]

you can also consider hot fermenting yeast strains like kveik

 

[RPh_Guy]

you can also consider hot fermenting yeast strains like kveik

It's still good to have temp control to keep fermentation 90-100°F to get the best ester profile and avoid off-flavors.

 

[El Nino]

You need to do fermentation temperature control. Period.

Ask the experienced brewers here: what was the biggest step forward in your brewing? A huge percentage will say "fermentation temperature control."

Since I was a total newbie I've never had a bad batch of beer. I've heard many friends say they tried homebrew, or tried brewing and it never turned out good. One of the first purchases I made was a chest freezer and temp controller, I'm thinking that had a huge thing to do with it. Those people who had / made bad homebrew always gave a blank stare when I asked if they temp controlled their beer at all.