Wee Heavy Help!

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pstorti

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Hello Folks!

Sunday I brewed my first Batch, an all-grain Wee heavy.

I started looking into the subject since the beginning of the year and decided that Wee heavy would be a good Challenge.

Grain Bill:

6.6lb Munich malt type 2
6.6lb Pale Ale
2.2lb Crystal malt
2.2lb Vienna Malt
1lb Biscuit Malt
0.2lb special B Malt

for a 5.3gallon Batch.

Efficiency wasn't so great, got stuck at 1080 (estimated was 1112) and bumped it to 1102 with 1lb molasses.

pitched the whole thing at 77F with 2 packets of nottinhgam ale dry yeast.


it is now sitting in a 10gal bucket with a near the bottom and an airlock bubbling every 2min or so.

One caveat though: I'm in Brasil, in a place where temperature ranges from 65F(at night) and 95F. I placed my bucket in a cellar where average temp is around 77F.

And i have no control over temperature.


Isee people here saying I should not rack to secondary, taking 4 weeks in primary and such... but at my temperature range, won't there be autolysis?

Hope you can help me!
 
Hi Pstorti

Yeast really loves to ferment at over 30 degrees C (don't you have Celsius in Brazil???? :huh: ) but at that temperature it also produces fusel oils and esters that don't taste good, so brewers like to keep the temperature down as far as possible. The temperature you mentioned in the cellar is around 25 degrees C which is not a disaster, you may get a bit more fruitiness in the beer, but for a high gravity like a wee heavy I think you should get away with it - is it possible to drag it down a bit more with wet towels etc?

In Britain a lot of bitter and special bitter ales are brewed in the low 20s so you are not too far out of the ball park, but as near to 20 as you can manage would be good.

Autolysis is dead yeast that decomposes, I wouldn't worry about it in your case as the yeast isn't being killed, it's loving it :lol:

Where abouts are you in Brazil? I've had a good look around the place since Google Street View covered a lot of the country, I'd love to get there someday but at my age probably just a dream :(

Where do you get your supplies from there??
 
Hello Folks!

Sunday I brewed my first Batch, an all-grain Wee heavy.

I started looking into the subject since the beginning of the year and decided that Wee heavy would be a good Challenge.

Grain Bill:

6.6lb Munich malt type 2
6.6lb Pale Ale
2.2lb Crystal malt
2.2lb Vienna Malt
1lb Biscuit Malt
0.2lb special B Malt

for a 5.3gallon Batch.

Efficiency wasn't so great, got stuck at 1080 (estimated was 1112) and bumped it to 1102 with 1lb molasses.

pitched the whole thing at 77F with 2 packets of nottinhgam ale dry yeast.


it is now sitting in a 10gal bucket with a near the bottom and an airlock bubbling every 2min or so.

One caveat though: I'm in Brasil, in a place where temperature ranges from 65F(at night) and 95F. I placed my bucket in a cellar where average temp is around 77F.

And i have no control over temperature.


Isee people here saying I should not rack to secondary, taking 4 weeks in primary and such... but at my temperature range, won't there be autolysis?

Hope you can help me!

You could well regret adding the Molasses, it could, and probably will dominate the flavour.
Lack of temperature control is your biggest enemy. You could wrap wet towels around the fermenter and a small desk fan trained on the towels. Stand the fermenter in a bowl of water and let the towels wick up the water.
I very seriously doubt you will get autolysis. I never rack to a secondary but, I do have tight temperature control dropping the temperature to cold conditioning temps on ales and lagers, the cold acting as a preservative for yeast of course.
 
Hi Pstorti

Yeast really loves to ferment at over 30 degrees C (don't you have Celsius in Brazil???? :huh: ) but at that temperature it also produces fusel oils and esters that don't taste good, so brewers like to keep the temperature down as far as possible. The temperature you mentioned in the cellar is around 25 degrees C which is not a disaster, you may get a bit more fruitiness in the beer, but for a high gravity like a wee heavy I think you should get away with it - is it possible to drag it down a bit more with wet towels etc?

In Britain a lot of bitter and special bitter ales are brewed in the low 20s so you are not too far out of the ball park, but as near to 20 as you can manage would be good.

Autolysis is dead yeast that decomposes, I wouldn't worry about it in your case as the yeast isn't being killed, it's loving it :lol:

Where abouts are you in Brazil? I've had a good look around the place since Google Street View covered a lot of the country, I'd love to get there someday but at my age probably just a dream :(

Where do you get your supplies from there??

Yeah, we have Celsius here, it is just my habit of converting everything into imperial when speaking english =)

my fear of autolysis is due to the fact that the high temperature will lead to more yeast and eventually no more sugar! Then The yeast dies and blows up.

I'm in a Town Called Uberlandia, Center-south-east Brasil.

Dream on!
 
Uberlandia in Minas Gerais, mate I am totally and seriously impressed :)

uberlandia.jpg


If you can keep the temps around 25 then the yeast won't explode at the end of the fermentation, it should just settle out and go to sleep - you shouldn't have autolysis problems for a few months.
 
Great! will try to cool it a bit then.

I'll build an evaporative cabinet. :lol:
 
ALL MUST SALUTE THE NOOB. =(


I didnt cool the wort before reading the refractometer after boiling. My friend just told me his refractometer does not compensate for temperature. Assuming it was at 70C when I measured it (blowed it like hot food so it wouldnt break the thing), I did the math here.

it measured 28Brix at the time. Compensating temperature to 20C, it goes almost 34Brix, which translates to 1.135 SG

Today I measured my fermenting wort: 1.060


Now what? I'm thinking of pitching some WLP099 or WLP028 (bought both) to make it less sweet. It tastes good, but i think it tastes more like a barley wine at this stage.
 
third day in a row @ 1.060 SG

I think Notty is gone X_X

What were your mash temps like? I wouldnt expect Notto to stall at those temps.. also, are those refractometer readings adjusted to compensate for the Alcohol or just direct readings?

Well done for that sort of brew for your first one mate!! It all gets easier from here in for you ;)
 
direct readings... the compensating calculators say i have 1.007, which does not make sense.

my mash temps were 10min @ 110F for beta-glucanase, 10min @ 125F for proteins, 30min@ 145F until conversion then 10min @ 160F for Alpha-amilase then mash out.
 
Gday Pstorti,

Don`t rush it mate. Just leave it alone for at least 2 weeks. Longer if you can.
I would expect your visible signs of fermenting to have ceased
especially when fermenting at 25C.
But there will be a lot of by products and fusel alcohols in the beer that need cleaning up.

Unfortunately I reckon your beer will be quite 'fruity', but for a first attempt you`ll learn a bunch -
namely - How important temperature control on fermentation is.

You can`t fix your gravity now, and you won`t be able to do much aesthetically to the beer without a fridge,
but you can leave it to clean up as well as possible.

Perhaps a 'saison' might suit your environment better?
 
I guess so.

the visible signs of fermentation did cease. But right now it is so sweet its unbearable. That's why i'm considering pitchin in some WLP099 so it dries out a bit more and become drinkable.

And I bought a freezer, just need the thermostat now.
 
today I have borrowed the same refractometer I used at the brewday. Tested it with different sugar water concentrations at different temperatures. The damn thing compensates the temperature, unlike my friend told me.

NOW the calculations to correct the alcohol deviation make sense:

initial brix was 28, 1.115 SG
current brix is 15.2, 1060 SG - Corrected for alcohol, 1.023 (was getting 1006 before)

which makes more sense and gives me a bit of hope.

I think i'll calm down now. :pant:
 
Folks, this is what it turned out to be after 3 months:

11% abv
very malty
very sweet
low bitterness


simply delicious, but very very strong. Seems to me it turned out to be a barleywine lol

Drank that bottle, got drunk and hungover over a period of 4h

Now i'll store those bottles for a year.

Cheers!


61456_510551748965527_325872850_n.jpg
 

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