Can not get laravel to read .env file with capistrano deployment

I just upgraded my laravel app from v4 to v5 and everything works fine localy.

Before, I used capistrano to deploy laravel 4 to the dev/staging/prod servers and everything was fine.

After the migration looks like when i deploy the .env file or app.php file is not being read. I get this error

PHP Notice:  date_default_timezone_set(): Timezone ID '' is invalid in /home/deploy/apps/application/releases/20160719220556/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Bootstrap/LoadConfiguration.php on line 45

Not sure what is wrong with it but even if i run on the console php artisan env it throuws the same error.

Does anyone successfully deployed a laravel 5 app with capistrano v2.x

via Chebli Mohamed