fermentation temperature

The day 2 morning ferm temp of my ale in a carboy is 80F while the room temp is 62F. Cause for worry?

It depends upon your yeast strain.  In most cases, such high temperatures will promote rapid yeast activity with the high probability of off-flavors such as fusel alcohols, Acetaldehyde, Diacetyl, or Penols.  Often the high activity reduces the chances that the yeast cells will be around to consume such intermediates of the breakdown of sugars to energy (and alcohol) as the available sugars become scarce.  Some strains such as a few of the Belgian strains, saison strains, and Kveik yeasts are able to take higher fermentation temperatures fairly well.

When fermenting, it is advantageous to control the temperature of the carboy, bucket or conical rather than room temperature.  The yeast activity is exothermic and will rapidly increase the temperature inside the fermenter well beyond that of the ambient surroundings.  You can cool down your fermenter some by using a water bath to absorb much of the heat produced or a swamp cooler which is a towel or absorbent cloth with the ends in water and the cloth draped over the fermenter.  This will wick away the heat and the process of the water in the cloth evaporating will cool the fermenter.

Thanks for the reply! I will attempt to cool down the carboy with a wet towel as you suggest and think about a refrigerator in the future to use with my dual temp control/heating jacket. I thought this temp differential was odd because while exothermic activity has occurred with Imperial AO7 yeast in several previous batches it has only been five or six degrees above ambient; this time it seemed extreme. I did use Fermcap for the first time and wonder if it traps heat under the krausen head. Previously I have used a blowoff tube. Maybe that tube assisted in releasing heat somehow. Tom

One of the best things I've ever done to improve my beer making is not the shiny stainless steel equipment or the expensive, whisper quiet pumps... but attention to fermentation temperature control. If you can afford it, invest in temperature control of some kind. For chilling that equipment could be as simple as a swamp cooler. For heating you can use an inexpensive heat belt. There are all sorts of tools and methods in all price ranges. Once you can control that temperature you will notice a welcomed improvement in the outcome of your beer and in your consistency from batch to batch.

I've ruined exactly one beer by fermentation heat getting out of control. it was in a 60ish degree basement and got up to 95F

you found something in your process you need to improve upon. invest wisely!

Thanks for these replies. Very helpful. The wet towel brought down the temp and now it's chugging along as usual, the heater keeping it at 68F. Hope nothing drastic happened to the flavor. Am appreciating the crucial and delicate nature of fermentation, I guess second only to sanitation in importance!

It took me until my second year of brewing to realize that it is easy to make wort and there are many ways to do it.  The critical step is the fermentation where treating the yeast right or wrong can lead to a variety of results from very good to disastrous.  I started putting my efforts and money into fermentation temperature control.  This change made the difference between my beers scoring from the 20's to low 30's in competitions to 30's to low 40's and from getting comments from 'it's good' to comments of 'when are you going to open a brewery?'

Thank you. I will definitely acquire a refrigerator. I've used a stainless tube in the carboy for sensing, and I've taped the sensor to the side of the glass. Is the taping method just as good? I'd like to avoid that extra internal apparatus.

Taping the sensor the the side of the glass carboy works fine.  I take a bit of flexible foam insulation and tape it over the probe and I have measured within a degree of the inside of the carboy.

You'll certainly lose a slight degree of accuracy, make sure if you're taping on the outside to cover in several layers of some form of insulation. otherwise you'll just be reading the ambient external temperature.

When i was doing it that way i took about a 4" square of 2" thick Styrofoam insulation, taped some sandpaper onto my carboys and made the insulation fit the curve of the carboy. then dug out a small spot for the sensor. i would tape that whole assembly on the carboy.

now i use probes dropped inside thermowells in my conicals. personally i think the internal method is likely more accurate, although if trying to get a large difference you may end up with a difference from the outside to the inside. all methods have flaws unless you're keeping your wort/beer constantly moving!