1st Brew, Pitched To High, Ran With It Anyway...

[enforcermike]

Hi All,

I laid down my 1st brew on the 31st of march.

The Brew is:
Size: 23ltrs
1x 1.7kg Coppers Pale Ale
1kg Beer Improver (not sure it if was BE 1 or BE2)
US05 Yeast

Now it all started out OK, until i realised that i had read to many different ways of making the wort and confused myself.

The method that i did was that i ended up boiling all my water, boiled 18ltrs added it to the fermenter then boiled 5ltrs with the LME and BE then added it to the fermenter.

This is where the issues started to happen, as it was late on Thursday night, and ending up being in a rush and no idea what i was doing, i struggled for 3hrs trying to cool the wort. The best i could do was get it down to 40deg. (it was about 11pm now).

So i pitched the yest, placed it in the fridge (@19deg) and left it till last Wednesday (20th April). i took gravity readings over the last 2 weeks, i which they dropped from about 1038 to 1010 where it has stayed steady.

Then this where i have probably made my next mistake, the beer was still very cloudy and heading read about CC i decided to give it a go. and dropped the temps to 2-3deg. This has cleared up the beer perfectly.

But what now??

- do i need to rack it ? (so that i can add new yest)

- What yeast to add?

- how do i do it all?

i am planing on bottling on Wednesday (somehow) and will be using carbonation drops.

Any advise would be excellent.

Thanks Heaps

Michael

 

[manticle]

No need to add new yeast. All you will be doing is adding in something that you took pains to drop out. There will be enough yeast in suspension to carbonate.

I'd leave racking at this point, especially if not bulk priming (which you aren't)

 

[Bribie G]

I'd bottle straight away. What does it taste like? Yeast will quite happily ferment at high temperatures, in fact it wants to ferment at high temperatures and as brewers we make it do unnatural things like ferment at 20 degrees or below, to force it to make the type of beer and produce the flavours we want. You have got down to a perfect looking final gravity for that yeast, so you quite clearly didn't kill it.

So you certainly have beer - but may find that it has a twang such as nail polish remover, fusel oils etc but still drinkable. So bottle and try it after 10 days - preferably drink well chilled :icon_cheers:

For future reference, for a kit and kilo brew, dissolve the tin in some hot water in the bottom of the sanitised fermenter, and add plain old tap water. A good trick is to get some springwater cubes (empty) and chill the tapwater down to say 12 degrees first before pouring in, so that the resulting wort ends up around 18 or thereabouts, then pitch yeast.

Welcome to the all consuming obsession . :beerbang:

 

[Charst]

Hi All,

I laid down my 1st brew on the 31st of march.

The Brew is:
Size: 23ltrs
1x 1.7kg Coppers Pale Ale
1kg Beer Improver (not sure it if was BE 1 or BE2)
US05 Yeast

Now it all started out OK, until i realised that i had read to many different ways of making the wort and confused myself.

The method that i did was that i ended up boiling all my water, boiled 18ltrs added it to the fermenter then boiled 5ltrs with the LME and BE then added it to the fermenter.

This is where the issues started to happen, as it was late on Thursday night, and ending up being in a rush and no idea what i was doing, i struggled for 3hrs trying to cool the wort. The best i could do was get it down to 40deg. (it was about 11pm now).

So i pitched the yest, placed it in the fridge (@19deg) and left it till last Wednesday (20th April). i took gravity readings over the last 2 weeks, i which they dropped from about 1038 to 1010 where it has stayed steady.

Then this where i have probably made my next mistake, the beer was still very cloudy and heading read about CC i decided to give it a go. and dropped the temps to 2-3deg. This has cleared up the beer perfectly.

But what now??

- do i need to rack it ? (so that i can add new yest)

- What yeast to add?

- how do i do it all?

i am planing on bottling on Wednesday (somehow) and will be using carbonation drops.

Any advise would be excellent.

Thanks Heaps

Michael

Hey Michael Welcome to the obsession, Your First Mistake pitching the yeast at was definitely a mistake. Fermentation temps are crazy important but it's still going to be beer just not a clean a flavour as you might have liked.

From memory US-05 has an attenuation of 75% so It's done fermenting so crash chilling is cool. No mistake. How long did you crash chill it for?
doens't really matter even If you crash chill then lager a beer for a couple weeks there should be enough yeast floating around in suspension to just prime the bottles with sugar and it'll carbonate ok. It might look clear but they are in there dont stress.

Check out http://www.howtobrew.com/sitemap.html and find in section 11.7 bottle a lager for a little reassurance.

From how to brew:
"Ninety five percent of the time there is no difference between priming for lager beer and priming ale. But once in a while you will need to add fresh yeast for priming and carbonation purposes. This is most common when the beer is given a long cold lagering for more than two months. If the beer is very clear at bottling time, then the majority of the yeast may have settled out and there may not be enough left to carbonate the beer in the bottle. Prepare some fresh yeas" of the same strain and mix it with the priming solution when you rack the beer to the bottling bucket. You will not need as much as you originally pitched to the wort, only about 1/4 - 1/2 cup of slurry for 5 gallons."

More about this on the website check it out it's a very good book for beginners I refer to it regularly. First edition is available free

 

[roverfj1200]

Hi Mike.

As said no need to boil all the water for a kit I just add all the kit and stuff in the fermenter and add 1.5L boiled water, Disolve and top up with water and one litre ice block.

You could have put the fermenter in the fridge without pitching and cooled it for 24hrsand then pitch. I do this a lot with my extract brews..

Welcome to the dark side.