Question about conditioning temperatures.

I live in Mobile, AL and sometimes keeping my primary at optimal fermenting temperatures (even for Ales) is a challenge. I generally keep my primary bucket inside a rubbermade trashcan with a "door" cut in the side so I can monitor the stick-on thermometer on the primary. This gives me the ability to put a wet towel, or even a few ice cubes around the primary if necessary to keep the temp. down in the high 60's. Obviously fermenting is the critical period. My question is, during conditioning (both in secondary and bottles) how important is temperature regulation. I know conditioning is usually done at "room temperature," but is this a problem if room temperature reaches 78 or 80 degrees, like it does down here consistently in the summer. Just curious if there would be any ill effects if, say, you had a brew in a secondary and bottles for a total of 5 or 6 weeks with temperatures fluctuating between 70 at night and 80 during the day. Thanks for any input.

I have never had a problem with those temps for conditioning. I keep my thermostat to 78-80 all summer long. Now that I use a fermentation freezer fermentation isn't a problem either.

That much temp fluctuation would be bad imo. Small temp fluctuations of a degree or more is acceptable to age a beer, but ten degree fluctuations really impacts the flavor stability of your beer. Ideall youll want to condition at a near constant temp in the 65 to 68 range and then if possible store as cool as possible. Listen to the brew strong episode on hot side aeration. They go into detail about this.

Do you have a basement? 80 deg. is starting to get up there. The yeast don't have to do much to convert corn sugar, so you can probably do it. Temps and their fluctuations are more a concern in the primary fermenter. But a basement is nice as things are more stable. I guess you could dig a root cellar or something

I've never had issues with temps during conditioning causing off flavors. My loft has even been in the high 80's for several days with cases of bottles carb and conditioning, and never noticed anything. The amount of yeast fermentation activity actually going on in the bottle to carb, is really not going to be enough to cause the same type of off flavors you would get under full blown fermentation.

There may be issues with long term storage of beers, like aging barelywines that may be degraded in situations like that, but for the beer we are going to be consuming pretty rapidly, then the beer wouldn't be around long enough to have any issues.

Thanks all. I know that what's ideal isn't usually available. I'd love to have a basement at constant temp all year, but it's not an option in the deep south. Keeping things constant during a week of fermenting is hard enough. As long as no one has horror stories about conditioning at higher room temps, I'm certainly not going to sweat the small stuff.