Beer Forum

I recently brewed my first extract beer, an American IPA. Temperatures at home are less than ideal. I had been putting it off for quite some time now so I just decided to go for it, being that my best friend was in town and I wanted him to join me on brew day. I was under prepared for fermentation. My beer has been sitting @ about 77 degrees for about 2 weeks now. I thought the experience would outweigh the negatives, as I have learned a lot from this brew. My questions are, what off flavors should I expect? I used Safale us-05. I'm not transferring to secondary, should I bottle now, or bottle at three weeks? Help a newbie out!

Thanks!

77 degrees is not way out of the temp range of that type of yeast, it's optimum temperature is like 65-75. You should be fine as far as off-flavors, ale yeast is pretty forgiving. As far as bottling you should bottle when you're gravity stops changing or when you see fermentation slow down, hoped that helped you a little

High temps create higher ester levels and higher production of harsh fusel alcohols. You can expect this beer to be a bit more fruity and solventy than if you had kept the fermentation temp down.

See page 62 in this document for information on various off flavors:
http://www.bjcp.org/docs/BJCP_Study_Guide.pdf

(here's the link to the BJCP exam center which has more tasting/flavor info if you are interested in going further)
http://www.bjcp.org/examcenter.php

HTH-

Thanks drewbrew86 & BDawg .. I guess I won't worry and have a homebrew, thanks for the links BDawg

You can try the wet T-shirt trick next time. Place the carboy in a inch or so of water 'wearing a wet t-shirt. Then aim a fan at the carboy. The evaporation cools the T a lot more than you'd think. you could easily get your fermenter down to 70-72 doing.

Those will most likely be hangover inducing beers. I'm surprised you didn't have a massive blowoff...I bet it was cranking the first couple days!

it was a 4.5 gallon batch into a 6 gallon fermentor, so it was ok. It was very active for about 4 day's though. I'm gonna' taste and bottle this weekend. A little concerned because it did hit about 80 degrees at some point. I slacked, wont happen again

Don't worry about it. Sounds like my first batch experience. Bottle it, let it sit a few weeks and drink it. Like mentioned, you probably have some fusels in it so I wouldn't slam too many back in one sitting.

And the wet t-shirt trick works great, I pretty much did all my spring/summer fermentations this way for the last few years until I got my temp controlled conical.