Greedy little feckers...yeast temp too high ?

[setmash]

Hi, I made Sarah Hughes dark ruby mild on Wednesday with my highest grain bill yet of over 14Kg for 64 litres of ale. Still fairly new to the fold so Im using S04. It was a strange brew session culminating in me breaking my pump PSU which p*ssed me off but hey ho. I thought i had chilled the wort sufficiently before transfer to FV, my STC confirmed a temp of around 22 degrees so i pitched the yeast. Only to find, to my horror, that the temp probe was not seated to the FV properly and the actual temp of the wort was in fact 30 degrees. Of course the little feckers got stuck straight in and given the high sugar content of a 1058 OG ale they had a whale of a time. Bottom line i Couldnt get the temp down, started at 30 degrees, dropped to 27.5 degrees but as they chomped away it rose back up to 29 degrees and has stayed in that range since then - started dropping this morning now 26 degrees. Many lessons learned (as always). Yeast crust looks superb and the smells is divne, question is have i ruined all my hard work ?

[Eric]

I'd be in no hurry to decide. Don't give up on it before next year.

[bigrichlock]

Only one way to find out, taste it. It it tastes like paint stripper then stick it down the drain.

Once you are getting up to larger volumes 40L+ direct cooling is the way forward, get a Maxi chiller off ebay for 60 quid and a stainless coil to go in the fermenter, this set up would have chilled the wort down to 20deg from 30deg pretty quick, crisis averted.

Rich

[Rookie]

I'd be in no hurry to decide. Don't give up on it before next year.

Yes, give it time. You won't get the best possible beer at that temperature, but it could still turn out drinkable, maybe good.

[boingy]

+1.

You've put the work in so give it a chance to come good. Sometimes these things work out despite our best efforts at screwing them up.

[Dave S]

Funny that, the exact same thing happened to me with my IPA a fortnight ago and using the same yeast. It didn't get up to 30 but it was 27/8. Didn't have a problem getting it down to 17 though once the probe was properly stuck to the side of the FV. Crash cooled it on Tuesday and racked to bottling bucket today. The taste is fine, (I think).

[setmash]

Many thanks, still smells really good, now down to 19 degrees so will take a FG reading in the morning, must be close to target FG as the temp has now dropped lol. Fingers crossed it will be OK