Secondary ferm temps

I have a Dogfish Head 60-Minute IPA clone (thanks yooper) in the primary at a comfortable 68*F. When I transfer to secondary, can I bump the temp to 74*F or so to finish or does it really need to be kept at 68 for the duration?
If I can free up my ferm chiller, then I can do another brew in a week....

You really don't want to rack to a secondary until fermentation is completely done. So I am not sure what you mean about bumping it up to 74F.

Why not just bump the primary up to 74 in the final stages of fermentation, then cellar the secondary to age and/or clear the beer (that is the best purpose for a secondary vessel). Or just skip the secondary entirely if the beer doesn't need to age or if you aren't adding fruit, hops, oak, etc. I find 3 weeks in the primary alone makes better beer than 1 week in the primary and 2 in a secondary. (Note: there are some stickies and TONS of threads on this topic that you can also peruse for a full gamut of opinions.)

Maybe a little more background info will make this question make a little more sense. I have a liquid cooled fermentation chamber that I place my carboy in to maintain temperatures.


Obviously, it is in my HOT garage but maintains the temp at 68°F +- 0.5°F. I want to leave my beer in primary for 14 days, then transfer to secondary for another 14 days to finish out in the closet in my bedroom. I have to secondary in order to dry-hop for the last 6 days. The problem with my closet is that the temperature averages around 74°F, which is way too high for primary. (Already found out the hard way!) And my house is built on a slab, so one could say the cellar is a bit inaccessible.
However, if 74°F is OK for 14 days in secondary, this will free up the "garage ghetto-chiller" for another brew in another week. I am just trying to get out of waiting 30+ days to brew again, but DON'T want to risk the quality of the current brew to do so...

Wow- awesome cooler! Much nicer than my ghetto igloo cooler/water bottle method.

I think that 74 would be acceptable for secondary- that's when you're dryhopping, right? It'll be ok, but probably not ideal.

You could try it, and see if the liquid gets any warmer than that. Since fermentation is finished, it should stay right around 74 then- the upper limit of most yeast strains.

YooperBrew said:

Wow- awesome cooler! Much nicer than my ghetto igloo cooler/water bottle method.

I think that 74 would be acceptable for secondary- that's when you're dryhopping, right? It'll be ok, but probably not ideal.

You could try it, and see if the liquid gets any warmer than that. Since fermentation is finished, it should stay right around 74 then- the upper limit of most yeast strains.

Click to expand...

One of my neighbors owns a commercial aquarium business and had this chiller that was upgraded by one of his customers, so I got a great deal. It would have been out of the question otherwise because these dang things are $400 - $500+ new. I am going to "purty" it up a little when I get it freed up for a while.

I am planning to dry-hop at the end of secondary and hope to end up with a decent brew. I snagged your BeerSmith recipe export for this brew, but misinterpreted the hopping directions.... I failed to continuously hop the last 35 minutes of boiling, but just did a 30 min addition and a 35 min addition. I got the book "Extreme Brewing" by Sam Calagione (owner of Dogfish Head Brewery) AFTER I brewed. It wasn't until I read it that I realized the importance and application of "continual hopping".

Based on your comments, maybe it would be better to just wait another 3 weeks to brew and keep this one at 68°F just to be on the safe side.
The last two I have brewed and fermented at 74°F have taked FOREVER to mature. One I bottled early July is still real rough around the edges as of last night. The fussels are just too high to be smooth and I have seen better heads on bastard alley cats!