Post fermentation temp control?

Last Sunday I brewed an AHS Blue Moon clone partial grain. I have the carboy in a water bath with frozen water bottles and a t-shirt. I have kept the temp between 62* and 68* for 8 days now. Now that active fermentation is complete is it necessary to continue switching out frozen bottles? I plan on leaving it in the primary for another two weeks then bottling.

Did you check the SG to make sure fermentation is complete? Probably doesn't really matter, though, you should be fine letting it warm up to the mid 70's as long as most of the fermentation has finished. I probably wouldn't go over 80, though, so maybe just switch the water bottles less often. (that is if you don't have AC).

I'm paranoid about temperature now, so if you're at all at risk of your beer getting heat funk, continue with the swamp cooler minus the ice bottles.

there's no such thing as heat funk. LOL.

Whiskey, after the first 72 hours or so of active fermentation (which if your yeast had a 72 hour lag time would mean day 6) you don't need to sweat the temp control. It really is during when the yeast are at their most active that the risk of them getting too hot and producing off flavors. But when they're winding down then it will be fine to let the fermenter get warmer.

I usually swap out for the first week, then just let the beer go to ambient (or a few degrees below with the t-shirt wick/fan swamp cooler setup.) But after I let it ride temp wise.

Thank you all. Revvy, I made a starter and it kicked off in about 12 to 16 hours. I kept it in the low to mid 60's for a week. I will just leave it in the water bath. With AC it stays right at 70* to maybe 72*. Woo hoo! No more switching out bottles.:rockin:

Revvy said:

there's no such thing as heat funk. LOL..

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Okay, I am going to defer to Revvy on this.

What I meant by heat "funk" was what I think happened with my first batch.

I didn't watch the temperature at all. I just figured "as long as it doesn't get to 90 I'm okay".

My brew was in the primary for 21 days, and then I bottled it and put the bottles in the (ground level) basement where the temps turned out to be way warmer than I thought they would be (mid-80s).

6 weeks later I started drinking them and they were "okay" but there was definitely a more astringent quality than fruit quality in the yeast.

I figured it was a combination of the recipe itself, various noob mistakes, along with not paying close enough attention to maintaning a sane temperature for conditioning.

but yeah, listen to Revvy.

This is my forth batch. Batch two was pretty bad. Band-aid taste probably from phenols from too high fermentation temp. I just left the carboy on the kitchen counter and let it do it's thing. Five months later and the taste is still there. Batch three was a stout that I think turned out good. I wrapped the carboy in a wet towel and kept a fan on it. A master brewer from O'Dell's tried it and said it was good but had a slight "meaty" taste from too warm fermentation. Lessons learned. A chest freezer is coming soon. Til then it's a swamp cooler and ice.