Sour chamber got too hot! Help!

Last time I checked my sours which I have more than 40g of, everything was fine and that was last saturday. I guess the temperature sensor fell out. So the past few days my beers have been sitting in an insulated box with the heater on constantly. They are HOT! and the box was around 100-105 degrees. Some of my beautiful pellicles now have new darker bubbles popping up. It doesn't look like a unwanted infection but as if the air space in each fermenter got hot and dried out a couple bubbles on the pellicle. I have flemish reds,brown,saisons,berliners all down there.

Am I doomed?

I wouldn't think so. The bugs and bacteria used in sours can stand those temps without giving tons of off flavors like yeast. As long as everything was aging and not actively fermenting I wouldn't worry about it.

cardinalsfan said:

I wouldn't think so. The bugs and bacteria used in sours can stand those temps without giving tons of off flavors like yeast. As long as everything was aging and not actively fermenting I wouldn't worry about it.

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Agreed. Also, taste tells all.

I'm sure you're fine.

Pogopunx82 said:

Last time I checked my sours which I have more than 40g of, everything was fine and that was last saturday. I guess the temperature sensor fell out. So the past few days my beers have been sitting in an insulated box with the heater on constantly. They are HOT! and the box was around 100-105 degrees. Some of my beautiful pellicles now have new darker bubbles popping up. It doesn't look like a unwanted infection but as if the air space in each fermenter got hot and dried out a couple bubbles on the pellicle. I have flemish reds,brown,saisons,berliners all down there.

Am I doomed?

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I'm only 90 minutes away and have plenty of room in my 65 degree basement right now. Or I'll happily stop by and taste them for you next time we're headed to AVL.

Seriously though, hope they're fine. I'd have cried. More likely sobbed.

sours like little temperature swings kinda with the seasons.. i dont think those temps will hurt anything for that short of period.. i put a experimental soure in my garage for a year and i know i was getting upwards of 110deg in there on multiple days during summer.. turned out fine!!

Alright. Thanks for calming me down. Yesterday I pulled my WLP 670 saison outta the chamber thats been sitting there since April. I racked it into a keg and rebrewed a simple saison to put back in the fermenter. Its been over 13 hrs and no activity. Usually when I rack back onto a cake its starts up real quick.

Do you think the temp killed my yeast. I know the bugs can survive high temps but what about the yeast? If so that means all my slurrys/cakes will be ruined from future batches.

Update- No activity at 24 hrs. Not looking good.

Well it looks like it killed the yeast and maybe the brett. No fermentation whatsoever. I'm guessing the rest are the same. Since they are sorta "pasteurized" would the flemish's and they rest benefit from sitting there any longer? Or should I get them kegged? If thats the case I would love to free up those fermenters to start new ones with new yeast. I was looking forward to re-using the cakes over and over but now it doesn't look like thats going to happen. The oldest is a flemish red that is at 8 months.

When I put fruit in my sours it takes days (maybe more than a week) for the sacc to get moving on the new sugars.

At 13 months, much of the sacc will be done. It's old, the environment is acidic, and the Brett might also contribute to it's demise. At 13 months you will not have much sacc left anyway. Adding the heat will just compound it, weakening any remaining sacc yeast.

The Lacto and Pedio should be just fine. They like the warm. The Brett is pretty hardy too, and there should still be some in there.

The yeast might get going in a few days, but I'd just toss in a pack of dry to make sure there is some healthy yeast in there. For my sours, I always add fresh sacc when re-using old cake. The cake has all the good bugs.

The temp would have needed to get up to around 120 to kill the yeast. I'm am not sure about the bugs though.

Well woke up this morning to it fermenting, which is great. I didn't even think that yeast would have a hard time coming back after 6 months.