[Lazy Ant Brewing]

Question 1:

Is there a maximum recommended temp for allowing bottled beer to undergo carbonation after priming sugar is added?

I brew in the spectrum from brown ales to stouts.  In the wintertime, I'll put the bottled beer in my small utility room to take advantage of any additional heat from the gas water heater, furnace, and electric clothes dryer.  I'll also pull bottles one at a time and invert them to "rouse the yeast" before turning them rightside up.  I do this every other day.

In the summer, I'll use a corner of the kitchen and set the house thermostat to 80 F when I'm away from home.
Is 80 F too high?

Question 2:

Is it possible to speed up the carbonation process by adding more sugar to obtain a higher volume of carbonation than would be desired if you let the process finish, but interrupting the process before full carbonation is achieved by chilling the beer down and leaving it in the fridge at 33 F or 35 F until you drink it?

 In other words adding priming sugar for 3.0 volumes, but sampling bottles occasionally and  throwing the lot in the beer fridge when, in my estimate, carbonation has achieved  2.4 or 2.6 volumes.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

[dmtaylor]

Temperatue will speed things up and does not hurt in the short term.  I wouldn't leave the beer at like 80 F for longer than 2 weeks though as it will begin to stale pretty quickly after it carbs up.

Your second question is very dangerous.  I would not advise trying that.  Risk of bombs or gushers is high.

[pete b]

Refrigeration will slow it down but not stop it. Dave's right: that's dangerous.
Putting on your heat in the summer is crazy and wasteful. 70 degrees will make for a fast fermentation, the difference between 70 and 80 will be much less than the difference between 60 and 70 IMO.
Lastly, the types of beer you are making give no reason to hurry the process. While there is no reason to age them if they are not high gravity the only reason I would ever hurry bottle conditioning is to drink a hop forward beer while super fresh.

[The Beerery]

I have read, the source escapes me at the moment (one of the professional brewing books, brauwelt, brewing science, mbaa, etc). That once yeast goes dormant, i.e. is done with fermentation, the beer will then start the staling phase, the warmer that temp, the faster it will stale. So I would be careful about accelerating temperatures.

[Lazy Ant Brewing]

Refrigeration will slow it down but not stop it. Dave's right: that's dangerous.
Putting on your heat in the summer is crazy and wasteful. 70 degrees will make for a fast fermentation, the difference between 70 and 80 will be much less than the difference between 60 and 70 IMO.
Lastly, the types of beer you are making give no reason to hurry the process. While there is no reason to age them if they are not high gravity the only reason I would ever hurry bottle conditioning is to drink a hop forward beer while super fresh.

I'm not adding any heat at all in the summer.  I had been just turning the house thermostat warmer to reduce the amount of time the A/C runs and consumes electricity.

But after reading everyone's responses, I'll put the bottled beer back in the fridge and set the temp controller to 72.

It's kind of hard anymore to find a virgin to sacrifice when the beer is bad and the brewing gods need appeased.  Its easier to ask you guys and do it right to start with.

Again, thanks to everyone for their advice.

[Todd H.]

I swear I read somewhere that someone (chino_brews from Reddit maybe?) tried carbonating in a 30 degree C (86F) water bath for 24h and it worked.  Makes sense, since 30C is the optimal growth temperature for cerevisiae.  So I guess there's your upper limit.

And of course don't do the second one.

[Brotillery]

For your second question, for priming bottles 0.8oz. Dry weight of priming sugar per gallon of beer works really well for most styles. I wouldn't go that high like you were saying, you will end up with bottle bombs most likely.