too warm, bad beer?

Hello all,

I am brewing my first American Wheat beer. every thing has been going great! Or so I thought.

my OG was 1.05, three days later no bubbles and current gravity at 1.01...nothing wrong here...However, I made a noob move by not checking the temp. my thermometer is complete crap, got to get another one.

im guessing that it was around 70-75*F for about four days. then I realized that this was too warm! so made a room cooler, and it is now around 68*F.

my question is, by it being a little bit on the warm side, is this going to give me some nasty off flavors in the end?

Thanks!

Don't worry about it.

There might be some extra aroma(s) or taste here and there, but they won't ruin the beer or anything. If you notice them, they'll likely just add some character. Really, 75degs isn't so bad.

I've brewed well over 100 batches, many of which fermented at similar temps as those - often higher - in an unconditioned San Diego apartment. My roommate back then and I generally used American Ale yeast, since it did alright at those temps.

One thing I've learned over the years is to not get too worried about every little variable. Some times stuff happens, but the beer will turn out fine the huge majority of the time. As long as you brew clean beer - meaning free of contamination - you'll make great beer just about every time.

Yes, some off flavors have probably been produced. Don't panic. Leave the beer in primary for a few weeks; the yeast will try to clean up after themselves.

You'll probably taste a slight off flavor if you crack a beer after 3 weeks of carbing. Give it about 5-6 weeks at room temp after bottling, and the off flavor will condition out.

by 70-75F, do you mean ambient or internal temp? active fermentation will raise the internal temp upwards of 5-10F, so if that was ambient, you'll likely have lotsa banana & fusels. 70-75F isn't going to kill a brew, esp a wheat, but controlling ferment temps is one of the most important steps to making better beers.

Slightly warm temps on a wheat are likely not to be too terribly off putting - done that myself. The beer wasn't at it's full potential, but it had some coriander and orange to hide behind. Time will clean up some things as well but I've never personally had a beer's fusel alcohol character clear up with age.

What yeast did you use? If you used a standard american ale yeast like us-05 you are probably fine but it may have a little ester like a euro wheat beer. If you used a more estery yeast like wb-06 you could be in trouble. I fermented a beer with wb-06 at about 72 and it created fusels and a couple of those beers would give me a good headache.