Had a heat belt on for maybe 14 hours last night on my ruthless rye clone (us 05 yeast, og 1.057) I made last Sunday. The temp strip was reading about 25c. Fermentation has slowed down a good bit from what it was. I was wondering would the core temp be much higher than that the strip on the outside reads and just how screwed is my beer? :(
Probably not at all. Chill, if you're worried take a taste sample. If it's gone wrong it'll already taste like cloves and bananas. I suspect it'll be fine.
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...or nail polish. :P
It really depends on the yeast though.
Mine ferments at about 22 without any noticeable off flavours and I mostly use us-05, if your fermentation is winding down you should be fine
The internal temp will be higher.
US 05 can take a bit of heat a bit better than some other yeasts.
Never use a heat belt at the start of fermentation unless you really know what you are doing.
Over the winter I may use one to finish off fermentation and attenuate out - when the vast majority of fermentation has already happened.
Was the heater belt in direct contact with the strip?
Would like to here how this turns out. I've used Us-05 a good bit and it seems to be very forgiving. Have had it at 23degC in the first two/three days without any off tastes. If all else fails pretend you attempted a Belgian something or other and tell your friends that this is what real beer should be like!
If this happened on Thursday night after a brew on Sunday then I think you're fine. I've been monitoring both internal (centre of fermenter) and the wall temperatures of my fermenter for my last few batches and there are big temperature differences during the first few days but after that they start to balance out. If anything, heating with a brew belt after primary fermentation is done probably means that the wall temperatures will be higher than the internal temperature so the 25deg should be a max figure.
I've also seen recommendations (Yeast, White and Zainasheff) that you should raise temperatures 2-3deg above the recommended fermentation temp after primary fermentation is done for a day or so to help the yeast clean up after themselves-sort of like the ale equivalent of a diacetyl rest, which sounds pretty much like what you've done. I was thinking of trying that out on my next batch so if you let us know how this batch turns out I'd be interested in getting some feedback.
thanks for your replies lads... I'll let you know how it turns out. Fermentation seems to have almost completely stopped now after 5ish days.. it is only 18 litres so I should expect it will take less time than a larger batch for the yeast to eat all that sugar yeah??? gonna rack it to secondary it tomorrow.