S-04 fermented a bit warm...opinions?

Hey guys,

A batch of EIPA I brewed this past Sunday was furiously fermenting away last night and, pressing the palm of my hand against each carboy, I noticed a discernible difference in temperature between that and the carboys of Scottish ale that are sitting quiet and happy after 2 weeks. The Scottish ale felt cool to the touch, while the EIPA was noticeably, um, "less cool".

While likely not the most reliable way of measuring the temperature of a carboy, I held the tip of my Thermapen against the carboy wall of each batch and the EIPA measured at around 72F while the Scottish read around 68F. I figure the actual internal temperature of each might be a bit higher.

My question after this rather long winded preamble is, assuming the EIPA was actually fermenting around 75-76F, what kind of effect, with regard to esters, will that have on the ale?

I immediately draped each carboy in a wet t-shirt with the bottoms of the shirts in containers of ice water and a fan blowing on them. This morning the carboys had improved drastically, and were sitting around 67-68F and still bubbling away at a fairly fast pace, so I figure the carboys might have been sitting at that higher temp for several hours (6-10?) at the most? The ambient temperature of the basement is around 68-69F.

Anyway, with the vast amount of knowledge here on HBT, just wondering what you guys feel the chances of this beer coming out way too "fruity/cidery" are?
It's too late for me to do anymore than I have now, just wondering what to expect.

Cheers!

 

I got nasty fruit from S-04 in a porter fermented that hot (now it tastes like cherry cola). But that was before I even knew to be worried about temperature, so I never corrected it, and it was a drastic over pitch (pitched on an entire yeast cake). If you caught it early it might be fine. Maybe leave it a little longer on the yeast to clean up.

 

75-76 actual ferm temp isn't horrible but I'd venture a guess that there's mild ester funk action going on. But you caught it pretty quickly so it could be minimal.
Only one way to find out!

 

Thanks guys!
So you think leave it one the yeast for a bit longer to help clean it up?
It's fairly well hopped. 2.5 oz of 8.7% Target @ 60 and 1.5 oz of 6.7% Challenger @ 15 and 5 each. Estimated IBU's is mid 40's. I'm hoping that, plus the 1 oz (maybe 1.5 oz) of EKG each carboy will get might hide any potential excess esters. Reasonable?

I was thinking of transferring to a secondary carboy for the dry hoping stage, but perhaps I'll just dry hop in the primary to keep it on the yeast?

Cheers!

 

sounds like a good idea.

i dry-hop in primary exclusively. no point in getting another vessel dirty, and expose the beer to the risk of oxidation and infection.

 

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