Halting The Bottle Fermentation

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toadskin

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I have found that some of my brews drink best young, at around the 4 weeks in the bottle time. After that they seem to lose their hoppiness and begin to mellow right out.

My thought is, can you stop the ongoing maturation in the bottle with ultra-violet light? Sort of an ultra-violet pasteurization and would that help preserve the tastes/aromas that you want or at least prolong them?

Has anyone tried this?
 
Not a good idea - search for beer skunking and a resultant BYO article found
states:

There are numerous references in the brewing literature stating that light ranging
from 350520 nm results in skunky beer.


which includes a good chunk of the UV spectrum. I think some cider makers
use heat pasteurisation to stop bottle fermentation so that might be an option.
 
I have found that some of my brews drink best young, at around the 4 weeks in the bottle time. After that they seem to lose their hoppiness and begin to mellow right out.

My thought is, can you stop the ongoing maturation in the bottle with ultra-violet light? Sort of an ultra-violet pasteurization and would that help preserve the tastes/aromas that you want or at least prolong them?

Has anyone tried this?

I think maturation mostly comes from things (hop oils etc) breaking down due to chemical reactions and not so much the yeast. So doubt pasteurization would help much. could be wrong though.

Constant refrigeration is probably the best bet when it comes to slowing down reactions (in general). Or having mates like mine who will make sure they dont have time to age ;D
 
jus a thought though and I could be terribly wrong.
I use campden tabs for my fruit wines to stop the yeast.
I have never thought abt it for beers
 
I tasted a lager of mine that's developed some unwanted flavour over the course of a month or two and I'm wondering the same thing.
If you're using Campden tablets, would you add them to a secondary container after fermenting, and would it still be ok to crash chill?
 
No. Weird. Just drink them quicker or try filtering and see if that does the trick.

Campden gives me a headache.

Could try bottle pasteurisation as detailed on homebrewtalk.com. Having never tried it myself, I can neither recommend nor rubbish it. I'm hesitant to put pressure filled vessels in hot water for any length of time but some people swear by it.

I think SUICIDER may have made a thread on ahb about it too.
 
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