I had to pitch my yeast last night a few degrees over the high end of this yeasts range. ~78 for the Ardennes strain. I put the fermenter in my kettle and filled with cool water. (Was out of ice). Today I checked when I got home from work and it was at 81 or 5 degrees over the high end. Would it be a fruitless endeavor to try to bring fermentation back down or would this have an adverse effect? Stalling them out or something else I'm not aware of,,
I'd bring it down slowly, because you really don't want to be that high at all, but being a Belgian strain, you might get away with it. I haven't used that specific strain. Anyways- chill it down slowly. You don't want to shock it, and you don't want the yeast to fall out, since it's a pretty flocculant strain. I'd say you'd be fine.. If it's 81 in there, you've got plenty of room to drop the core temp down.
IMO this is one of the most important aspects of brewing. The very first thing I bought when I moved to a warm climate was a freezer/controller setup. I would put a cool, wet t-shirt over it with a fan blowing on it, then keep the t-shirt wet/damp by adding water every few hours. This should bring it down slowly. Meanwhile, get some plastic bottles of water freezing, and put the whole thing in a water bath along with the t-shirt/fan setup*, and add a bottle or two of frozen water to the water bath, replacing as they thaw. I doubt this would produce any shock to the yeast, as it takes a lot to move the temperature of 5+ gallons of water any significant amount. But it should slowly move it to a more desirable temperature than 81F. *you might get the t-shirt to "wick" the water and stay slightly damp that way
