Newbie Question About Ag Brewing

[manticle]

Leaving your brew for a bit of extra time after fermentation has finished should improve the brew.

Does the resulting beer taste cidery? Do you mean green apple flavour or something else? Thin and watery?

Could be a number of things. How are you aerating? What's the yeast and how fresh is it? What recipes are you making and what is the expected gravity?

 

[chunckious]

Recipe is 10min IPA stovetop no-chill.
The only prob I could see with brew day was that I miss read Brew-mate was short 3.5L of initial start volume. Smelt amazing going into FV after chill. Sprinkled half packet of US-05 (room temp) after aeration of pour-in from stove pot.. Fermented @ 19-20 over 2 weeks. Didn't see any signs of infection in FV. Taste was sour.

 

[argon]

What was your volume into the fermented and what was you starting gravity?

Without really knowing the above I'd say you've underpitched. Half a packet of dry yeast sprinkled on the surface of the wort won't really be enough unless your volume is very low. Why only half the yeast packet? What did you do with the other half?

It's a widely held principle that you'll lose half your yeast viability when pitching dry. Rehydrating your yeast in water is preferrable prior to pitching giving you maximum viability. As a pack of us05 is 11g and you used half (assuming you got exactly half) you only pitched 5.5g. Then because you added it dry, you lost another 50%, effectively pitching 2.75g of viable yeast. To me that seems not enough. The yeast would have been stressed and thrown a few off flavours at you.

 

[chunckious]

Only ended up with 6L in FV. I didn't have a test tube type gravity capsule to take OG. To shallow to float the boat in the pot.
If you can use a packet of yeast with a 23L batch I newbie assumed that half a pack would have done this small amount. Remainder is in sealed container in fridge.
Thanks heaps for the responses also.

 

[Tim F]

Do you have a reference for that argon? First time i've heard there's significant negatives to pitching dry yeast.
@ chunkilicious it's fine to use half a pack of yeast for half a batch. It's also fine to leave beer in the fermenter for a few weeks if your sanitation is up to scratch.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Maybe a sanitation issue.

I have left beer on the yeast cake for almost 4 weeks, and I've had beers that are 2 month's old by the time primary, secondary and cold conditioning is done (though not often, as I don't have the patience to wait that long).

I have always pitched dry yeast straight in, 1 pack for a 23L batch. It's designed with enough food to get going, and I don't get yeast stress induced flavours in anything I produce.

Which brings me back to either sanitation or temp control. Though I'm surprised that there are no mentions of sulphur/burning alcohol tastes, which would indicate temp issues.

That's all I can really think of.

 

[marksfish]

Do you have a reference for that argon? First time i've heard there's significant negatives to pitching dry yeast.
@ chunkilicious it's fine to use half a pack of yeast for half a batch. It's also fine to leave beer in the fermenter for a few weeks if your sanitation is up to scratch.

Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff in the book "yeast" and J.Z on many b.n podcasts.

 

[Bribie G]

Do you have a reference for that argon? First time i've heard there's significant negatives to pitching dry yeast.
@ chunkilicious it's fine to use half a pack of yeast for half a batch. It's also fine to leave beer in the fermenter for a few weeks if your sanitation is up to scratch.

Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff in the book "yeast" and J.Z on many b.n podcasts.

p 146

 

[argon]

Do you have a reference for that argon? First time i've heard there's significant negatives to pitching dry yeast.

marksfish and BribieG have answered, however, perhaps i lost the sentiment in the semantics... but what i meant was pitching dry yeast dry into the fermentor... ie not rehydrating just sprinkling.

 

[manticle]

Sour indicates a possible infection. How confident are you in your palate? Are you used to 10 minute IPAs? What was the hop/s?

Is there grassiness, overbitterness or something else going on?

Leaving beer in the fermenter for a bit extra is a good thing (although using a hydrometer is also a good thing). It won't cause oxidation unless you shake it around a lot.
I don't believe sourness is an indication of oxidation either and pitching half a pack of 05 into 10L of wort should be fine. I don't rehydrate my dry yeast (only use 05) and use 1 pack with no resulting yeast stress flavours, Jamil and C White notwithstanding. I reckon the 50% thing is a worst case scenario, not a standard but that's only from my experience of using as is, not a measured, unbiased perspective..

 

[Tim F]

Cheers, like goomba I've found 1 pack of us05 pitched directly into 20 odd L gives a healthy ferment with no obvious problems. I'd usually only rehydrate for a higher gravity wort. But might change that.

 

[felten]

Recipe is 10min IPA stovetop no-chill.
The only prob I could see with brew day was that I miss read Brew-mate was short 3.5L of initial start volume. Smelt amazing going into FV after chill. Sprinkled half packet of US-05 (room temp) after aeration of pour-in from stove pot.. Fermented @ 19-20 over 2 weeks. Didn't see any signs of infection in FV. Taste was sour.

Like Manticle was saying, acetaldehyde (green apples/cidery) can be a sign of infection as well, acetobacter will convert ethanol into acetaldehyde on the way to acetic acid. You should note some vinegar smells if that was the case though.

 

[chunckious]

Ok.
Upon reviewing my processes and reading up, I relealize that I didn't put water in the air lock. Having never done any sort of K&K, I never knew that this was on the list to do :huh: . So my airlock was a airflow.
I'm hoping that this the silver bullet to my funky first brew.....

 

[bignath]

Ok.
Upon reviewing my processes and reading up, I relealize that I didn't put water in the air lock. Having never done any sort of K&K, I never knew that this was on the list to do :huh: . So my airlock was a airflow.
I'm hoping that this the silver bullet to my funky first brew.....

Yep, that'll do it....

Oh well, get cracking on another brew fella, and put water in that airlock.

Or use gladwrap instead. Do a search on this. It's great!

 

[chunckious]

Yep, that'll do it....

Oh well, get cracking on another brew fella, and put water in that airlock.

Or use gladwrap instead. Do a search on this. It's great!

Thanks Nath,
Luckily my second brew on Sunday got put it into a new Bunnings FV that has to have the glad wrap on top.
Otherwise it would have been Groundhog Day.

 

[chunckious]

Would PVC hose impart a taste if just racking from the primary to the secondary bring room temp wort?

 

[Truman42]

I have a few more questions about hopping.

1. So if I throw hop pellets in loose do they stay as pellets? Im of the thought they dissolve and therefore cannot be removed. Or do they sink to the bottom so can be removed once you transfer to your fermenter after doing BIAB.

2. My recipe calls for this

15 g Galaxy (Flowers, 14.9 AA%, 10 mins)
25 g Galaxy (Flowers, 14.9 AA%, 5 mins)

In the notes he says..This was a no-chill beer, hence only late hopping and slightly higher IBU's than listed. Firstly if I am going to use Galaxy flowers at 13.4%AA as that seems all I can get, how would I change my hop times if at all?
And if I was going to use the chill method would I also increase my hop times?

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Pellets settle into the yeast cake, and if you carefully remove the fermented beer from the yeast cake into another fermenter using food grade tubing (commonly called the "bottling bucket"), you won't stir it up, and you won't end up with half an inch of yeast in each bottle either.

You then bottle as per normal from the bottling bucket.

Goomba

 

[bignath]

Would PVC hose impart a taste if just racking from the primary to the secondary bring room temp wort?

It's probably not considered "best practise" to use PVC tubing in the brewery, but i do use it for transferring from primary to secondary if i'm going to rack and condition my beers. Actually to be perfectly honest i use PVC tubing a lot in my brewery without any adverse side affects. Never tasted anything weird in my beers that was contributed by my hose selection.

One day i'll replace them with silicone type hosing which is what most people WOULD consider to be best practise...

so many things to upgrade though....don't know where to start sometimes..

 

[bignath]

2. My recipe calls for this

15 g Galaxy (Flowers, 14.9 AA%, 10 mins)
25 g Galaxy (Flowers, 14.9 AA%, 5 mins)

In the notes he says..This was a no-chill beer, hence only late hopping and slightly higher IBU's than listed. Firstly if I am going to use Galaxy flowers at 13.4%AA as that seems all I can get, how would I change my hop times if at all?
And if I was going to use the chill method would I also increase my hop times?

You poor bugger - ONLY able to get nice, juicy, fresh, Galaxy flowers...

If no chilling, I wouldn't adjust your times, i'd adjust the quantities instead. By how much? Don't know off the top of my head, and i'm not near my brewing computer to work it out.....

And yes, If using the chill method for your recipe you'll need to increase the times and/or quantities aswell.