Fermented too hot, smells like bread yeast.

I brewed a Weiss beer last night, everything was going well, Pitched the WLP300, put it in my keezer that i'm using as a temperature controlled fermenter (my apartment is always hot). I set the Johnson Controls dial to 65F and went to bed. I get up, open the lid on the keezer and smell bread yeast. I took the temperature with my digital thermometer and it read 81F! There was also a very high Krausen.

Two questions:
Is it ruined? I'm aiming for a Schneider Weiss taste. The last time I tried a Weiss I fermented it too high and it tasted like bread yeast I ended up throwing it out. It has only been about 16 hours at 81F.

Is it strange that my Johnson Controls temperature regulator is about 20 degrees off? Do they calibrate it for free?

dude, how warm is it in Ohio? Im an in tTexas and have no problem holding a mid 75's at this time of the year.

Wear a coat and turn your heater of and RDWHAHB!

Haha, that would be nice but I'm on the top floor of the apartment, we get free heat, so even if I turn my heat completely off in the middle of the winter my apartment is about 80 degrees due to the people downstairs.

Did you have the probe in a glass jug of water, or something in the keezer? Or did the probe somehow fall out of the liquid? Or where you measuring the ambient temperature inside the keezer? What was the temperature of the wort when you pitched? If you pitched the yeast before the wort got below 70 degrees or so, that might explain why it got so hot.

You can try looking at your settings, but it sounds like something happened to make the keezer not turn on.

The beer will probably have more fruity esters than you planned, but if you got the temperature down as soon as you could, it should be ok.

YooperBrew said:

Did you have the probe in a glass jug of water, or something in the keezer? Or did the probe somehow fall out of the liquid? Or where you measuring the ambient temperature inside the keezer? What was the temperature of the wort when you pitched? If you pitched the yeast before the wort got below 70 degrees or so, that might explain why it got so hot.

You can try looking at your settings, but it sounds like something happened to make the keezer not turn on.

The beer will probably have more fruity esters than you planned, but if you got the temperature down as soon as you could, it should be ok.

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It was measuring the ambient temperature. This may be a dumb move on my part but I'm guessing putting it in a glass of water would be a better indicator of the temperature in the fermenter. I pitched the wort at 80 degrees, the temperature of my apartment was about 75 at the time (I had the windows open) so I didn't see it coming down any time soon. I'll make adjustments next time.

I don't mind the beer being fruity, I just don't want the overbearing yeasty/bread taste that I got last time.

Also, I'm doing an open fermentation (the keezer was sanitized), skimming the krausen off of the top with a large sanitized metal spoon as it starts to break the top of the bucket. I'm going to put a lid on as the fermentation dies.

vanhanz said:

I don't mind the beer being fruity, I just don't want the overbearing yeasty/bread taste that I got last time.

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Time is on your side. You can age most of that out. Granted, a hef tastes funny after awhile anyway, but you should be able to find a balance.

Also, tape your probe to the side, putting it in water does nothing.

vanhanz said:

It was measuring the ambient temperature. This may be a dumb move on my part but I'm guessing putting it in a glass of water would be a better indicator of the temperature in the fermenter.

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In the labs I work in we stick the temperature probes in a vial of sand. That way we don't have to worry about evaporation.