Made Mistake in Pitching Yeast

[matman89]

Hello all.

I just got into brewing very recently, and started brewing my first batch of ginger beer. The recipe called for Windsor yeast; I made the mistake of pitching the yeast too warm at around 81 degrees F thinking it would cool down to room temperature. A few hours later the yeast was working quite vigorously, bubbling maybe 3 times a second. I opened some windows and blew a fan on it that night. The next morning, I took a temp reading and it was sitting at around 84 F!

I transferred to a water bath, added a couple ice packs to it, now the temperature finally seems to be slowly moving down to the low 70s-upper 60s. Is my batch ruined? Any comments,suggestions, or feedback is appreciated. Thank you!

 

[ThatVideoKid]

Well there's no telling really, and you can't really fix it if it is. Just ride it out for a couple weeks and taste it. Then you'll know

 

[Pariah3j]

You may get some off flavors but its not ruined - it will be beer. May even be very tasty. One of my best batches was my first batch, I followed the instructions mostly(added more hops then called for one part) and it was really warm in my apartment that summer - I believe during the afternoons it may have gotten up to about 80-85 degrees because that apartment couldn't cool very well and was a record breaking summer. Tried recreating the flavor, never could get it come out the same so its the only thing I can think of, and it is still one of the best home brews I've made to date. So as stated, just let it ride.

 

[DocScott]

Ill take the other side of this argument. While it may come out consumable, it probably won't be great. You'll likely have fusel alcohols produced at those high temps along with some other unpleasant flavors/aromas.

I do agree that there is nothing you can do about it now. If you do get fusels, dump the batch and try again, as in my experience, they do not fade as some people claim they do.

Fingers crossed that it's salvageable. Don't get discouraged either way. You learned about temp control early in your homebrewing career. It took me a year plus.