Warming bottles to kick-off secondary fermentation.

JohnB

Typically, I decided to bottle 20 litres at the beginning of the present cold snap. Temperature in the kitchen is around 15Deg.C which is probably too cold for effective secondary fermentation to kick in. Does anyone have any tips for warming the bottles which do not involve the airing cupboard for obvious reasons or switching central heating on?

Thank in advance,

John

HBO_Staff

Hi John, if you use a heater tray on your fermenting vessel then we use the same trays to stand bottles on for a few days too to get secondary fermentation going. In the same way they keep the brew warm in a 25 litre vessel, just stand your bottles on it and it will warm the bottles in the same way. You can get around 20 x 500ml bottles on at a time, so if bottling 40 pints just warm the first 20 for a few days and then the second batch of 20 afterwards for a few more days. If using PET plastic bottles such as the screw cap or crown cap version we have, one great advantage is you can tell when the secondary fermentation and carbonation are under way as the bottles become hard to the touch as the pressure builds up;

 http://home-brew-online.myshopify.com/collections/all/products/25l-fermenting-vessel-heater-tray

Because the heater trays only use 25 watts of electricity they are relatively economical to use too