I’ve got an invitation to go out of town for a few days and won’t be able to maintain stable temp in swamp cooler for secondary fermentation. Primary was kept as close to 64F as possible adding ice twice daily. If I set the temp on my household thermostat to 72F, for a few days, how will this affect fermentation?
Thanks in advance for your advice.
Not important. Raising temperature at the end of fermentation can encourage full attenuation without any flavor impact. Secondary is not really fermentation, just “conditioning”, and warmer temperatures are OK (to a degree… 70s is fine).
Yep. Agreed with Narvin. You will be just fine, even if the beer gets up to 75F (providing primary fermentation is fully completed).
+2 to everything they said. You’ll actually get a cleaner beer out of it, provided fermentation is already complete.
I don’t temp control any of my secondary fermenters. Only my primary.
Generally speaking the first 72 hours are the most important times to keep fermentation temp under control. That means there is no need to maintain 64 degrees in a swamp cooler after that initial 3 days. In fact, it’s probably better if you let the temp rise at that point.