First post to the group, so hi folks and thanks for all the info! Ok, so I have a keezer in my shed, it’s been pretty chilly here in Austin lately so I bought a heat lamp and plugged it into my inkbird controller to keep my beer nice and cozy in the mid 60’s during fermentation (Fullers ESB Clone – 5 Gallon Allgrain). It had been in primary about 4 days, and did seem to have finished up or at least slowed right down on fermentation so last night I switched it from my blow off valve to a regular bubbler. While I was in there I was messing around and must have hung the thermo probe for the inkbird on the outside and never put it back in. My heat lamp ran all night, I came out this morning to a beer that had been cooking all night…… the beer was 140F yikes!!! I'm assuming the yeast is cooked, but I am hoping it did it's job. The good news is that this was going to be my first shot at kegging so don't need yeast for carbonation. Question is - How messed up do you think this will be?
@kiwipablo welcome to BA. You will get better luck with this if you post this to the homebrew forum. Select Forums from the main menu, go down to SubForum section and there is a forum called Homebrewing. You're probably fine, but there are guys there than can give you a better dissection. Good Luck and hope the news is well
I agree that you are probably fine. I have not seen a problem like yours discussed in this forum, so I'm guessing that the only way to determine if the beer is okay would be to go ahead and keg it. The above is assuming that you took a gravity reading and the reading confirms that fermentation is essentially done. If it still has a ways to go to reach the expected final gravity, you might want to try adding more yeast to see if you can get it restarted. However, if the beer tastes good now and is not too sweet, I'll say keg it and see what you get. P.S. Welcome to the BA site and to the Homebrewing forum.
Thanks guys, I'll take a reading to be sure. It had actually been in primary for 6 days (I brewed Friday not Sunday) so I am hoping that was enough time.
Do you think the beer was at 140 °F (60 °C) for a full day (24 hours)? According to the curve below which is based upon the Arrhenius Equation a beer that has been at 140 °F for one day will display pronounced stale character. I would recommend that you drink this batch quickly. Cheers!
That's cool info, thanks. The heat lamp was on for about 14 hours, the beer would have taken a pretty decent amount of time to get to 140 from where it was sitting at 65. Looks like I may need to pitch some more yeast as its sitting at 1016 shooting for 1010.
I wouldn't worry about the 0.006 difference. Go ahead and keg it and see what you have. That didn't even taste sweet, did it?
His chilly his my high temps for the most part.... Today was a high for me was 16 While no expert I would say it sounds OK. Only one way to really find out. Only thing I could think of as a down side would be perhaps some off flavors if the yeast was still active as it started its climb past 70 degrees.
Well, that is 'good news' as compared to being at 140 degrees F for a full day but even a lesser time at 140 degrees is not fully good news. At the risk of being repetitive it would behoove you to drink this beer sooner vs. not. Even a few hours at such a high temperature will have staling effects. Cheers!
I did this with a nut brown and my temp was 95+ - for more than a day, actually don't know but anyways, the beer was not what I had made in the past and I do remember others were less than impressed. Chalk it up to experience and have a party.
In many cases, time can make a difference. I don't think the 0.006 will make too much of a difference, but if you're concerned, you can repitch some yeast and keep a closer eye on the temp for another week just to make sure. Taste it and see! That's the only way to know for sure. Depending on what types of off flavors were produced, time may or may not help clean it up. If anything, a lot esters could have been produced and all you need to do is see if the new yeast can clean it up any. If not and if it's not too off, you could always try blending it with a cleaner ale and see if you can find a good balance with blending. Interested in seeing how it tastes at this point...
Cool chart. While I'm somewhat familiar with the Arrhenius Equation, I've never seen it applied quantitatively as a "Days to display pronounced stale character" curve. Do you know who put it together, whether it was based on sensory analysis (or is notional), and if based on sensory analysis, what kind of beer, etc?
I don't think time is going to do anything to attenuate this beer further if the beer reached 140F as the OP said.
A very similar graph is in this document: https://www.brewersassociation.org/attachments/0001/3980/EDP_Quality.pdf As you will read in this document the source was Dr. Charlie Bamforth (UC Davis).
Follow up on this. I wound up some pitching US-05 and leaving another week. FG was down at 1008 so I kegged it up. It's drinking pretty nicely now and a buddy took half off my hands so I'm getting through it quick enough that it won't have time to deteriorate. Did a side by side with Fullers and they were close although mine was lacking the honey aroma and has more biscuity notes - probably a result of the US-05 doing some house keeping. Thanks again everyone.
