Secondary temperature same as primary?

I know that low temperatures are cruicial during primary fermentation. After primary fermentation (7-9 days) , do I still need to keep my ales at 60-70 degrees? Or is it ok to rise up to about 80 or so while in my carboy clearing for a couple weeks? I know bottles can condition in those temps just fine right?

Its a lot of maintainance to keep 1 pail cool, but I plan on running another primary and then a secondary. If I have to cool all 3 I won't be able to do it all at once.

If you just want to use secondary to clear your beer then it should really be done at lower temperatures. The cool temperatures allows the yeast and suspended proteins to clump together and fall out of suspension.

I dont think he is talking about cold crashing. Just the general 2 weeks or so it takes a beer to clear.

Obviously keeping the same range is ideal, but letting it rise is less problematic as long as fermentation has completed.

dcp27 said:

Obviously keeping the same range is ideal, but letting it rise is less problematic as long as fermentation has completed.

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So if I am fermenting at 70 degrees for 9 days... fermentation ends, and I throw it into secondary for another week or 2 at 78-80 degrees... how much is this going to effect the taste ? If any at all? The only reason I would have this happen is because I have a 5 gallon carboy , and a 6.5 primary that I want to have 2 more batches follow in rotation. And I only have 1 tote for keeping a batch cool.

I keep mine in the same range as the primary, so that whatever yeast is left will still be able to convert whatever remaining sugars there are. I've had secondaries kick up yeast activity more than once.

After a week at fermentation temp my ales go to room temp. That has been as high as 85F. I've won blue ribbons with beer conditioned that high. I'd still recommend keeping it under 80F. A few days over 70 is a good thing but it doesn't take any longer than that for the yeast to clean up. If I could keep them cooler I would.

wulfsburg said:

So if I am fermenting at 70 degrees for 9 days... fermentation ends, and I throw it into secondary for another week or 2 at 78-80 degrees... how much is this going to effect the taste ? If any at all? The only reason I would have this happen is because I have a 5 gallon carboy , and a 6.5 primary that I want to have 2 more batches follow in rotation. And I only have 1 tote for keeping a batch cool.

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probably very little effect, unless like teromous mentioned the yeast activity kicks back up. as long as you determine fermentation is over by measuring the gravity, then you got nothing to worry about