Notthingham Temp Overkill! Help!

I just came to home to an Uh-Oh situation with my Red Rye Ale. Let me give some back ground...

It is winter in Seattle and I keep the heat off in the kitchen (location of my fermentation chamber) to save money. The chamber unplugged will maintain 55 degrees. A bit cold for the Nottingham yeast I pitched last night on my Rye Ale. So i added in a brew belt to bump the temps up 10-15 degrees... Well i came home from work today to check on the Ale and to my surprise the ambient temp of the cooler was 74 while the wort was at 78+! Yikes!!!!

So the million dollar question, is this ale doomed? I have removed the brew belt and am letting it cool down naturally to see where it will level off, but it could have been rolling at that temp for 8+ hours. The yeasties are going ape sh*t in there and the airlock is bouncing off the wall.

I guess I'm looking for some guidance as to what I could potentially do to save this beer. I plan to ferment/age for 3 weeks, then Keg and carb/age for 2 weeks.

Your advice is greatly appreciated!

Ty_Deschaine said:

I just came to home to an Uh-Oh situation with my Red Rye Ale. Let me give some back ground...

It is winter in Seattle and I keep the heat off in the kitchen (location of my fermentation chamber) to save money. The chamber unplugged will maintain 55 degrees. A bit cold for the Nottingham yeast I pitched last night on my Rye Ale. So i added in a brew belt to bump the temps up 10-15 degrees... Well i came home from work today to check on the Ale and to my surprise the ambient temp of the cooler was 74 while the wort was at 78+! Yikes!!!!

So the million dollar question, is this ale doomed? I have removed the brew belt and am letting it cool down naturally to see where it will level off, but it could have been rolling at that temp for 8+ hours. The yeasties are going ape sh*t in there and the airlock is bouncing off the wall.

I guess I'm looking for some guidance as to what I could potentially do to save this beer. I plan to ferment/age for 3 weeks, then Keg and carb/age for 2 weeks.

Your advice is greatly appreciated!

Click to expand...

Just Gradually get it down to 68F, which is probably about 60F ambient at this point. Brew belts are great but they really should be on a temp controller with the sensor in a thermowell in the wort.

I use Nottingham and prefer to keep it under 65 if possible. You might (probably) get some off flavors from the high temp start but let it go for an extra week or two and the yeast could clear some of that up.

bosco