Unintended stress test for US05

Ingredients
1

I brewed a porter on Jan. 9th, put a fermentation wrap around the plastic bucket, set the temp controller for 68 F and stuck the bucket in my garage fridge which I had unplugged.

With the cold weather we’ve been having, the temp in the unheated garage was cold enough that the indicator light on the temp controller was always on indicating that the wrap wasn’t providing enough heat to get it up the 68 F I had selected.

So I brought the bucket inside my family room, stuck it underneath a card table and put a black garbage bag over the bucket to keep out light, but did not use supplemental heat from the wrap.  Everything going fine for the moment.

Then a close family member died and I had to do a very quick emergency house cleaning to receive out-of-state relatives who were going  to staying at my house for a few days.

Put the bucket back out in the garage fridge, plugged the fermentation heater wrap back into the temp controller and thought everything was fine.

A day later (or perhaps two days later) I opened the fridge door and it was HOT. 87 F!!! air temp ( I don’t know what the actual temp of the brew was inside the bucket) In my haste to get back to the house cleaning, I had left the temp probe for the controller on the cold garage floor!!!

Then after the funeral and bereavement meal we had lots of food left in the styrofoam-to-go boxes which take up a lot of space;  So I had my son plug in the outside garage fridge to store the leftover food.  That of course sent the temp of the beer down below 40 F.

Now  the beer is back in my family room with the yeast warming up again.

I’m thinking it will probably be a negative “educational experience” i.e. it will probably taste awful with the temp excursion to 87 F, but time will tell.

2

You might be fine - if fermentation was essentially complete before the 80F exposure, you just subjected your beer to a warm warehouse bulk storage, which isn’t good for it, but it may not wreck it.  I would cold crash and rack it and package it.  As I taste them, US-05 subjected to cold raises the phenols in the beer (I tried US-05 at mid 40’s and it was clovy), and subjected to higher temperatures raises the esters (if early in the fermentation).  Those are subjective sensitivities I have experienced and not based on any objective tastings of stressed beers (no triangle tests, for example).

Good luck and cheers.  Brew again, pitch plenty of yeast and pay close attention and you will be fine.

3

Thanks for your comments.

I’m not sure it was far enough along because of fermentation at relatively low temp to avoid picking us some nasty flavors when it got hot.  I’m going to give it more time, check FG at two-day intervals until I get the same readings like usual. Then I’ll taste a sample.  If it taste ok, I’ll bottle it. I have some coffee extract I might add to a portion of the bottles.

Again thanks for your advice.

4

I lucked out!

I pulled enough for a FG check.  FG is exactly what I anticipated and the uncarbonated sample tastes great.  The beer is very clear and my fridge is very empty.  On Friday,I’ll pull another FG sample to make sure  fermentation  is finished and bottle it.

5

Good to hear.  Those yeasties are resilient buggers!  Enjoy!