Bottle Now? Or Later?

I brewed a peach hef that I would normally bottle soon. The only problem being my vacation backs right up to that (poor planning).

My question is since it is summer there will limited ability for temperature control while I'm gone. So should I bottle the beer right before I leave or bottle it when I get back? The difference in time in the secondary is 1 week so I'm not worried about the extra time more about what the temperature change could do. Anyone know if the temp will have more or less affect in the fermenter or in the bottle? Or if it won't matter?

Thanks!

High temps are never good for beers. Even in the bottle, the reactions that take the beer to get old happen 2-3 times faster every 10°C you raise the temp. For example, if you have a beer that is stored in a basement at 10°C and gets old in 6 months, if you store it in your house at 20°C, it will get old in 2-3 months; if you store it in a garage at 30°C it will get old in 3-4 weeks. This happens to all the beer since higher temps accelarate all the natural chemical reactions in place.

Coming back to your question, it would be nice to know a little more: what temp raise we are talking about, if you are sure that the fermentation is done and what are the differences in storage place you use from the secondary to the bottle. Generally all the yeast mass is not very happy with high temps, but bottling to soon can deliver other problems like not fully finished fermentations and so on.

Cheers from Italy!
Piteko

Fermentation has completed per gravity readings.

Not sure what I'll be looking at temperature wise because I'm not sure what the weather will bring, if we have a heat wave it could be bad, if it is mild it won't be any problem regardless. In the lower part of my house I can probably keep the temp at worst in the 75 to 80 range.

gdev said:

Fermentation has completed per gravity readings.

Not sure what I'll be looking at temperature wise because I'm not sure what the weather will bring, if we have a heat wave it could be bad, if it is mild it won't be any problem regardless. In the lower part of my house I can probably keep the temp at worst in the 75 to 80 range.

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The 75-80 range is not extreme (some belgian breweries like Abbaye de Rocs ferment all the beer in that range and, since my visit there, I made a beer in that range too). I think there will be no problem either way.

If you want to keep on secondary to clear the beer, you can smooth some temp peak making more thermal mass dipping the fermenter in a bucket of water, or even better in a tub. The water will keep the fermenter from swinging up and down from day to night and from hot day to cold day.

Cheers from Italy and happy holydays
Piteko

I'd keep it in the secondary and throw it in a closet somewhere in the middle of the house, at my place the the closet rarely every changes more than a 1-2 degrees... of course i live in canada!

Where were you going to keep it in the bottle?

I'd be concerned with loosing some of the peach aroma if the beer was left unbottled.

If fermentation is complete, there's really no concern about temps. Sure, the warm temps could drive off some of the aromatics, but it won't hurt the beer at this point. I'm assuming you went to secondary for the fruit addition, so maybe get it off the fruit if you're concerned about that. But I don't think a week at ~75, post fermentation, is of any concern.