Irish Red

A week ago I brewed up some Irish Red. It took off at first bubbling the airlock like crazy for a few days and then the weather turned cold and it cooled off and slowed way down. So I took the wort up into the attic where it's nice and warm, and then the weather turned hot again and it got really hot in the attic which is also not good for the poor yeast. I then moved it to the attic staircase which is cooler then the attic and warmer than the house. It seemed to be doing okay there, though now it's gotten cold again.

I checked the wort last night and it had a gravity reading of about 1.020; down from the original gravity of 1.044. So it's more than half way and it tastes pretty darn good. One thing that does worry me a bit is that the fermenter had negative pressure when I took the bung out to retrieve wort for the gravity measurement. This I assume is because of the temperature drop. What worries me is that the yeast wasn't producing enough CO2 to stave off this negative pressure; has the yeast stopped fermenting and gone dormant? Now there is oxygen in the top of the tank so unless the yeast keeps fermenting it could be bad news for the beer. I will check it again tonight and perhaps put a space heater on it if it needs to warm up.

Probably I'm just worry about nothing and the beer will turn out just fine. I'm thinking I may name the beer Lucky Dog; seems even more appropriate now that it's future may be in jeopardy.