Frozen wort

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mandrake

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Hi all,

had a bit of an issue over the weekend as my thermostat control went on the blink and left me with a fermenter half frozen. The beer was a week or so into the brew prior to freezing so still a good way to go - the krausen was frozen solid atop it. So i have decided to leave it a day or two to slowly come back up to 17 deg then plan on hitting it with a fresh starter of yeast.

any advice on what i should be doing in this case?

any help appreciated!
 
I'd check the SG before pitching more yeast.
I've had two very similar brews before going at the same time with us05. After a few weeks 1 had a solid layer of yeast on the top and the other didn't. Both had hit their FG.
 
After a week into fermentation, it should be fine. The yeast at the bottom should revive quite nicely, wouldn't bother repitching.
 
thanks for the info guys.

has soothed my fears a good measure! hoping to put this one into a comp later this month so would be a kick in the teeth to lose it before she has a chance to whet a whistle!
 
Yesterday afternoon I pitched us05 into my FV. Then I got up to check in the morning, only to find that the temp probe on my controller has fallen outside of the freezer door.

I pitched the yeast at 4pm yesterday afternoon, and when I checked it after the footy the probe must have fallen out turning the fermentation fridge into a freezer.

I have a 27ltr and a 25ltr FV of wort and yeast not completely frozen but not far from it. I have opened the door and trying to warm it up as quick as possible. Its currently at 11'

I going to let it go and see what happens, its now an experiment!!

Has this happened to anyone else before and did it have adverse effects on the flavour?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
 
Another good reason to tape the probe to the side of the fermenter rather than having it dangling loose inside the fridge/freezer.

You are fermenting wort to turn it into beer, not fermenting air. Measure the temperature of the brew itself.
 
Yes, in hindsight I should of taped my probe to the side of my fridge. It is normally weaved in-between the fridge shelves and left to dangle between the 2 FV in the fermentation chamber. However, mistakes and shit happen

My unanswered questions remains, has this happened to anyone before?

Or more to the point, have I killed my yeast by freezing it in the early stage of fermentation?
 
Rocker1986 said:
Another good reason to tape the probe to the side of the fermenter rather than having it dangling loose inside the fridge/freezer.

You are fermenting wort to turn it into beer, not fermenting air. Measure the temperature of the brew itself.
Taped to the fermenter under a beer cooler, use to have heaps of issues with freezing and temp fluctuations before making this chang
 
Yeah I use packing foam over mine. I have measured the temperature of SG samples a number of times to compare to what the temp controller is saying and every time it's been pretty much spot on, maybe 0.3C out or so. So yeah, while I can appreciate the idea of putting a stainless probe directly into the wort, I don't think it's really all that necessary. I do agree that measuring a jar of water nearby is useless as well, though.

To answer the original question, I have ended up with a beer slushie once. This was during cold crashing after fermentation, on the one batch in between temp controllers after my first one shit itself. I decided at bottling time to add a tiny bit of yeast from a lager yeast starter I had built up just in case, but I have heard of people not doing this and the yeast still being fine. That particular batch didn't taste as good as other batches of the same recipe; I don't know if it was due to the added yeast or the half freezing of it though.
 
OK... so I will definantly take extra care and make sure this avoidable issue does not happen again. Regarding the frozen beer.... the gravity has dropped from 1044 to 1034 in 3 days since thawing out.

However, I do not have a krausen like normal do when using US05. I have tiny bubble activity like you would see on the top of soft drink and my glad wrap lid is buldging up so there is co2 being produced and as mentioned before, the gravity is falling.

I have not made this receipe before so I don't have anthing to compare to. If I have damaged the yeast, I will be able to taste it. The samples smell and taste fine so far.

Will report once bottled and conditioned.
 

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