thoughts on bottle conditioning temps.

so this has been my first year of home brewing... i've made a total of (3) 5g batches, all of which i thought turned out GREAT, but now back to a bit of reality and work, which keeps me on the road and away from home for long periods of time. so after solid fermentation temps, and bottling, and enjoying the brews, i've been storing my brews in the basement where it's been a pretty constant 68 with either heat or AC been on... but now that i'm not in the house, i usually turn the AC way up to 86, or off sometimes because it's silly to cool a house (even to 86) when no one is there... but now that i have some precious home brew, that I made i'm a bit concerned about temps in the basement with the AC off. will the higher temps cause "off flavors" or make it mature sooner? or will the yeast sill in the bottles be effected and react weird? should i of put them in the fridge vs sitting out in warmer temps? anybody have any experience with this, or thoughts?

thanks for some insight!

First question, is how warm does it get in the basement with the AC off? The higher storage temps won't really cause the yeast to do anything weird, but they could speed up staling in the long run on some beers.

well that's the problem... ha.. i've already left the house, with the AC off, and now getting worried. i think i'll have someone swing by the house and see what the temps are here SOON.

well i guess i'll just have to drink the beer quicker when i return home. they are summer brews anyway. 2 versions of a weisse, and a great american kiwi wheat (KiWheat), then brew more beer and refill the empty bottles

I keep my AC off when I'm not home. I have read that higher temps shouldn't cause any problems. Heck, we had a decent heat wave last week, my house got up in the 90's during the day. I've got over 100 bottles conditioning so I sure hope it's not a problem!

There's no real worry about too high temps during bottle carbing. In fact you need temps above 70 to ensure good carbonation development. I've often had the temps up high in my place when away and never had an issues from off flavors during carbing/conditioning.

You're good.

Yeast like higher temps but so do other bacteria. We do our best to minimize contamination but we don't work in a perfect environment. Once carbonated you really should get them at least to cellar temp.

I haven't done any actual testing and most of my beers get consumed before staling can happen but I listened to an interesting podcast by Dr. Charlie Bamforth a few months ago. It was supposed to be about hotside aeration but towards the end of his very technical description of what hotside aeration is and does he brought out the point that the worst thing you can do to your beer for staling is storing it at warm temperatures (this would be after full carbonation has been achieved in the bottle). I don't remember the specific numbers but it was something like for each 10° C above the best storage temp (around 40° F) the shelf life of the beer is reduced by about 30%. If I remember right, once you get above about 85° F shelf life is under 30 days.

To get the exact numbers listen to the Brewstrong podcast on Hotside aeration