Day 4 of fermentation on my pale ale and I come home to an apartment that’s 73*f… I rely on the ambient temps and have been very successful with it so far, but this bothers me given it’s so early in the fermentation stage. The was 1.051and I’m using 007. Am I safe as long as I keep it in the low 60s? I’ve got it back down to about 62 right now. I’m mostly worried about acetaldehydes, but there’s so much funk that comes with early hot fermentation!
Well it’s obviously not ideal but I’m guessing you’ll survive. The first couple days are the most important and by day four to five you might be a bit out of the woods provided you pitched an appropriate and healthy amount of yeast. Not much you can do at this point but I’ve done way worse before I knew what I was doing and still came away with drinkable beer.
What caused the spike.
Well it definitely wasn’t swmbo turning up the temperature in the living room forgetting that I had a beer fermenting in there, and she absolutely didn’t hear me ask her to please, please, please let the apt. be slightly chilly for just 5 days.
So it’s a mystery.
[quote=“Hoppenheimer”]Well it definitely wasn’t swmbo turning up the temperature in the living room forgetting that I had a beer fermenting in there, and she absolutely didn’t hear me ask her to please, please, please let the apt. be slightly chilly for just 5 days.
So it’s a mystery.[/quote]
lol.
Well, I hope you figure out that mystery. Maybe you can put some duct tape over the thermostat next time you brew just to make some wind gusts or apartment ghosts don’t mess with it. :cheers:
another solution is to immerse the fermenter in water. it will take a lot more of a temp swing to move a bigger thermal mass. The more water the better, but 5-6 inches should do it.
You’ll be fine. Bulk of attenuation was probably done by then, and if it was a one day thing the beer didn’t have time to stabilize at the higher temperature.
She might have even done you a favor, raising temp toward the end can help with good attenuation and cleanup of byproducts. Obviously you should be thankful. 
