Fri Jul 10, 2015 2:32 pm
I've found that the majority of fermentation flavor comes in the first few days. I see two reasons for ramping temps. Keeping it cool and controlled at first to limit off flavors, and increasing toward the end to prevent the yeast from going dormant before their job is done. But still, there's not much difference between 68 and 70, so it seems that he was just giving a bit of insurance against premature stalling. It would also be imperative to have solid temp control with this method. If you were only measuring ambient temp rather than beer temp, the beer will be much warmer than 68 then drop to below 70. Starting at 68 and raising to 70 (actual beer temp) would be significantly better than ambient 68 raising to ambient 70.
That being said, I think I would take it a step further and pitch at 60, and walk it up one degree per day to 70.