Temperature Control Disaster

I rent a building next to my Dad's house that I use as a woodworking shop, and it's also where I brew. He called last night in need of a beer, and I told him to grab a couple of the bombers that were conditioning in my fermentation fridge. He apparently knocked the temp probe for the controller loose, and it fell out on the floor, but he didn't notice.

When I arrived this afternoon to do some furniture work, there was beer leaking out of the fridge, and when I opened it the ambient temp was at about 115 degrees with the heater going strong. Two bombers of DIPA had exploded, and the temp of the beer fermenting in the carboys had risen to about 98.

Luckily both carboys had beer that had finished fermenting and was ready to bottle. I'm thinking the yeast may be dead (or at least really stressed), but I think it might be ok if I add some yeast and then bottle it.

I'm a little more worried about all the beer I had conditioning in there, as I'm sure the temp in the bottles got up over 100. I'm guessing that the yeast is dead, and whatever conditioning/carbonation level they have now is about all they're ever going to have. Any thoughts as to what I can expect from these bottles? Do you think the ones that had pretty much finished conditioning will be ok, or did cooking them damage them in some way other than killing the yeast?

You'll need to get beer up to about 150* F to kill off all the yeast.

So unless the temperatures you were talking about were in *C, you should be ok.

Your beer that was pretty much done should be fine. The only precaution I would take would be to let anything still conditioning have an extra week or two before opening.

Thanks. I guess I should have known that 100* won't kill the yeast, as dry yeast is supposed to be re-hydrated in 100* water. I just hope that the 24hr heat wave didn't create any noticeable off flavors in any of the beers.

Relatively short periods of heat won't damage your beer much. I would schedule them for early consumption.

Yeah I would try to drink them quickly. My guess is they will start tasting off much earlier than normal.