Raising temp after 9 days primary

After going through this forum, and also happening to hear a question on lagering temp on the Strong Brew, I decided to raise the ambient temperature around my ales to 70 degrees. Is this generally a good idea, or am I looking into this to much?

Back info:
I have been fermenting in my bath tub with the bath tub water fluctuating between 65-66 degrees for 9 days. As well I have been using wet towels to wick heat from the carboys themselves. The advice given by Palmer on Strong Brew was to gradually raise the beers fermentation( for lagers) over the primary phase to ensure as the yeasts become less active that the beer stays in the proper temperature area for yeast to do their job well. I will still use the wet towels on the beer, but am just going to use my ambient air temp which stays at 69-70.

I have no way of gradually raising the temp around the beer. I will just be draining the water out from around my carboys. Will this shock the yeast?

Part of the reason the temperature is raised for lagers is for a diacetyl rest, since the yeast perform this at warmer temperatures. Because of the naturally higher fermentation temperatures of ales, there's generally no need to raise the temperature of your ale fermentation. I've kept my ales the same temp the whole time and haven't had any issues.

If you do still want to raise the temp, I wouldn't worry about shocking the yeast. I think yeast shock is more along the lines of pouring a refrigerated yeast into a room temperature fermenter. I don't think going from 66 to 70 will be a problem.

AJBrew710 said:

Because of the naturally higher fermentation temperatures of ales, there's generally no need to raise the temperature of your ale fermentation.

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This is true in general, but I recently used Wyeast 1882 and found that, as per manufacturer's warning, a thorough d-rest was very necessary!

To the OP: you say "after 9 days." Why 9 days? Your hydrometer, not your calendar, should drive your fermentation schedule. In my experience, d-rests are not usually necessary for ales. On the other hand, you are unlikely to hurt anything by using one. In fact, many (perhaps most) homebrewers are employing very long primary times these days; to the extent that even diacetyl-prone ale strains (like the 1882 mentioned above) are no problem.

My general approach is 4-5 weeks in the primary for ales now. Not always, but usually.

After 9 days you should be completely finished and there would be little impact on raising the temp. On a normal ale fermentation you can start bumping the temp after 3 days if you feel the need to start driving the yeast to maximum attenuation. I usually don't do this unless I'm starting yeast off pretty cool.

Both beers kigh krausened after 48 hours, but due to using a different technique I am pretty sure that I was in the low 60s most of the time. Can't wait for the fermentation chamber build to be put into play.

After primary fermentation, its totally fine to just stick it in a corner at room temp. Off flavors from too high a temperature happen in the most active stage of fermentation.