Secondary too hot, fermenter failed to maintain temp

I live in Texas and I had been having success with using my freezer as a fermenter and I use it in the garage without any problems. After 2 weeks in the primary, I racked the 5 gal Blind Pig Clone for one week in the secondary and I just started to dry hop it. Then I left on an eight day trip and the fermenter failed. The temperature got up to 100 degrees inside the fermenter for what could have been up to three days before my wife discovered the problem. She put it in a swamp box inside the house to help cool it back down. I also had some Oatmeal Porter bottles stored in the fermenter when this happened but I think I should be okay with them.

I am coming home tomorrow and was wondering if this brew in the seconding would be salvageable and if so what to do. Has anyone else had this happen and if so, how did the beer turn out? I know most esters develop during the primary but conditioning at 100 degrees really concerns me.


Although I have started kegging have read that bottling can help eliminate off flavors. Also, could I just prime the keg to get the same results? Any suggestions would be great.

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Most of your fermentation should have been done by the time you transfered to secondary and you should have left most of the yeast behind so you shouldn't really have to worry about too many off flavors.

Bottling will help. Kegging works too and its easier.

All in all your beer will be fine.

I bet it will be just fine. You controlled your temp during the most important part. I think that at worst you just advanced that beer by a week or two to an early oxidative demise. So unfortunately you may simply be forced to drink this batch extra quick. Damn the luck

It's really difficult to tell. If it was just up to 100 degrees, my guess is it shouldn't be too bad. 10 degrees higher though, and you may very well have caused a yeast holocaust. And unless you are set up to log fermentation temperatures, you can't be too sure.

I would pull a sample, put it into a sanitary flask or other small vessel you can ferment in, and taste a small portion of it to check for any OBVIOUS autolysis off-flavors - you don't want to jump the gun just because you THINK it MIGHT be.

If you don't detect any unbearably disgusting meat or burnt rubber off-flavors, then you'll want to check if the yeast might be dead anyways. Check the gravity (to ensure it was actually done fermenting), add a good amount of sugar into it and mix well, and then check the gravity again to get your "test OG". Give it a few days and check the gravity again to see if the sugar ferments. If so, you can probably just go on as planned.

If not, you may be able to add some more yeast for conditioning and/or priming (unless you force carb.) The best way to do this is to hit them with a starter at high krausen - for this particular purpose, you DEFINITELY want to be introducing active yeast as opposed to dormant yeast.

RDWHAHB It's probably fine. Worst case you have autolysis. Maybe you get some extra grassiness from the dry hops. But it's probably fine. High temps are much more damaging in the early stages of the ferment. 100F at the start of the ferment would have been a disaster.

Thank you all for the good information. As far as testing the yeast, would you go ahead and rack the brew off the secondary, say into a corny, while waiting for the test to complete, (I have a little yeast cake in the secondary). Also, if I don't get a good test, but the beer tastes bearable, how much yeast would you add, (I have one tube of WLP001), to condition/carb, given this situation.

nice of your wife to put the fermenter in a swamp cooler. my wife would have told me to **** myself

That's funny, I was waiting for someone to comment on my wife's help. It definitely cost me a weekend in the Northwest and a case of wine.

net2mal said:

That's funny, I was waiting for someone to comment on my wife's help. It definitely cost me a weekend in the Northwest and a case of wine.

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ha! i knew it was too good to be free!

I looked long and hard to find an answer to this and couldn't. Then I found this thread but, there was never any suggestion of how the finished product tasted. Can anyone chime in? I had this exact thing happen and am really up set. I am currently letting the beer slowly cool back down. So did the OP's ber turn out okay?

Yes the Oatmeal Porter in the bottles were fine. The Blind Pig turned out good too. It's been a while since that happened and a more recent batch of that beer turned out better. But I'd have to account for having more experience with AG brewing since then. I can say the batch improved dramatically after I bottled (keg) conditioned with new yeast and corn sugar. Just make sure you rack over to a new keg or bottle it and wait for at least three weeks.