Can I bottle condition / carbonate my Hefeweizen at "room" temperature (74-78 degrees)?

My first brew is almost ready for bottling. Winter is pretty much non-existent where I live, so "room temperature" is typically between 74°F and 78°F (23°c to 26°c).

I was planning to leave the bottles in the thick cardboard boxes they originally came in and covering them to keep the light out and avoid shrapnel from any hopefully unlikely bottle bombs.

Can I do this for 2-3 weeks and then start refrigerating whatever I plan to drink soon, or should I really look for a way to keep them at lower temperature throughout the bottle-conditioning phase?

Topic wheat-beer bottle-conditioning temperature homebrew

Category Mac

1
answered at

74-78F is on the warm side, so you'll want to reduce time spent at that temperature to a minimum to reduce the chance of staling reactions from affecting the beer. On the plus side, the high temperature means the yeast won't need more than 3 days to ferment the priming sugars and clean up, after which you can then chill the bottles for a few days to allow the CO2 to dissolve.

Can I do this for 2-3 weeks and then start refrigerating whatever I plan to drink soon

Leaving the beer at high temperature for 2-3 weeks will increase the rate of staling reactions in the beer, so I would advise against that. 3 days is plenty, and then store cool/chill for 3-5 days before opening.

Of course, I'm assuming the beer was fermented at a lower temperature. If that's not the case and the beer was also fermented at the warm room temperature, then there's no real harm in continuing at that temperature for the bottle conditioning.

About

Geeks Mental is a community that publishes articles and tutorials about Web, Android, Data Science, new techniques and Linux security.