Homebrewing Question

Factual Questions
1

So I started my first batch of the season - a moderately hopped amber ale - and I’m worried that my tinkering and a cooling mishap might have caused some problems.

The recipe is one I’ve had great success with in the past, although I’ve tinkered with it this time around, mostly in the hopping of it. It’s an extract and steeped grain recipe.

But my blowoff phase was much shorter than usual (36 hours) and now I’m only in the second day on the airlock (in the primary) and I’m down to a bubble every 30 seconds or so. Normally this happens at 3-4 days, and I rack to the secondary at 5-7 days normally (appr. 1 bubble every 60 sec)

I didn’t get a nice cold break in the wort - my wort chiller broke over the winter sometime and I didn’t realize until I had taken the wort off boil and connected the chiller to the faucet (water everywhere, but at least none got in the wort. I immediately hied myself to the store to get ice for a bath, but it took longer than I liked and I’m worried that might have messed something up too.

I’m wondering if my tinkering might have done something to cause this slowdown in the yeast activity. Should I add more or just let it be?

Specifics follow:

Malt:

6.6 lbs. Briess CBW Sparkling Amber

Grain:

1.75 Briess Victory Malt
.5 lb Caramel 40
.5 lb Carapils

Steeped 45 minutes until boil

Hops:

Bittering - Perle - 45 minutes
Flavor - Saaz - 15 minutes (normally I use cascade but wanted to try this)
Aroma - Columbus - 4 minutes off boil - (normally I add to the secondary)

60 minute brew

Pitched the yeast (safbrew t-58) at 74*

OG of 1.050, will take another reading @ racking to secondary.

Any thoughts? Am I screwed?

Ah well, even if I am I’m starting a nice Nut Brown on Saturday.
Thanks in advance

Picker
Homebrewer Not-So-Extraordinaire

2

Your good. In my experience, you have to really try hard to contaminate your beer. Then again, my career revolves around working with very sensitive compounds so YMMV.

Incidently, I did try very hard recently and believe I have succesfully contaminated my beer (No it’s not the Oreo beer, that still looks good.) But I’m telling you, I had to use ingredients that I knew were contaminated to get it to happen.

3

I’m really less worried about contamination - I’m pretty anal about cleaning and sterilization - than I am about the change in yeast activity from previous batches.

It’s died down pretty dramatically, and were I to walk into my brew room not knowing when this batch was brewed, I’d guess it it was about 7 or 8 days in and ready to rack to the secondary.

Should I wait it out and go with my normal plan of racking about a week in? Or is the yeast activity and bubbling a more solid indicator of the progress of the beer?

4

Relax. I’ve never used a wort chiller in my life, and my beers come out just fine. As soon as the airlock slows down to a bubble a minute or less, rack into secondary and proceed as usual. You are stressing over nothing.

5

That’s good to know. I was mostly worried that my hijinks compromised the batch.

I’ll raise a glass to both of ya in a couple of weeks.
So while we’re on the topic of brewing, educate me on the pros and cons of finishing the aroma hops after the boil versus when in the secondary, if any of you would be so kind.

6

I have never heard of this hopping in the secondary. Do tell me about it. I hate the bitter alpha acids that come off from the long boil hops, but I love the aroma of the beta’s that come off the finishing hops so this sounds very intruiging.

Man I think overhopped beers are disgusting. When did brewing become a “I can make my beer more bitter than you” competition? Just give me a Bud Light and take your IPA home with you. YMMV I know I’m in the minority, but I feel like its a crusade.

7

Dry hopping in the secondary can give you some absolutely marvelous aromas, especially if you use Cascade hops. The downside is that you have to rack cleanly to leave all the junk behind when you bottle, and you lose some beer that way. Hopping at the end of the boil gets you pretty much the same thing, without the secondary problem, since all the hops drop out in the primary. You lose a touch of the florals, but not that much.

Christopher, there is no such thing as an “over-hopped” beer! Sierra Nevada is nectar. Arrogant Bastard is sublime. Alimony Ale is nice and chewy.

8

you gotta be dry hopping me.

Maybe you have a stuck fermentation. One thing you can try is to start another batch of yeast and dump it in. Or you could just let it sit for another 2 weeks.

chances are extremely low you’ll cause undrinkable beer by not chilling the wort. I’ve never used a wort chiller. I have all sorts of different tricks for lowering the temperature. At the end of the day, unless it’s ultra hot, letting the wort cool naturally may alter the taste but rarely ruin it.

One thing I do that seems to work really well is to pre pitch the yeast. Start that sucker the night before so it’s good and foamy when you brew. Once your wort cools to a pitchable temperature, toss it in. Gives much less chance for bad wild yeasties to get started.

9

Amen. Preach it, brother.

Do tell. I’ve used a wort chiller and ice baths and that’s about it.

10

Judging fermentation activity by “counting bubbles” is a risky proposition at best. Use your hydrometer and take a reading every day. When the gravity stops dropping, it’s done. Any other method is WITCHCRAFT!

<points a suspicious finger at all of you bubble counters>

11

What planet are you from? :wink:

Umm, why did you do that? (Seriously, though, I’d like to know.)

No wonder you’d rather have Bud Light! :wink:

12

I’m guessing some sort of Lambic?

13

Hydrometers, bah! A Jedi needs not these things. Brew with the Force, you can.

14

I am just starting to get into brewing. I have a friend who has been doing it for years and he has helped me brew a couple of beers and a couple of meads just to let you know the VAST amounts of homebrew experience I have. :wink:

I watched the brewing episode of Good Eats and Alton Brown had an interesting way of cooling the wort. He did a partial boil and then used a 7lb bag of ice for the rest of the water. Seemed like an idea worth trying. What do you think?

15

Have you tried the Alpha King? (IIRC) I’ve only read about it, but it has 100s of IBUs.

16

If you are using boiled water for the ice, and you froze it in sterilized trays…maybe. I wouldn’t trust commercial ice.

17

Lots of people do it… it all depends on how much you trust your ice distributor/reseller and how clean it all is in transport/storage.

I top up to 5gal with water from my kitchen faucet, and though it comes from a well, it’s not run through any proper “sanitation” devices… simply the home water softener system. I’ve used ice to cool-down/top-up as well. I’ve not had any problems.

Don’t muck with it. It’s fine. RDWHAHB.

It can vary a lot, even from batch to batch with the same yeast. Perhaps some of the fermentables weren’t quite as fermentable as the last time through. Your grain bill is nearly 3#, and something as simple as temperature of steep, or grain crush size could change the fermentables extracted. It might have taken a little longer for the yeast to ferment last time, but they did it a bit faster this time. The quantity of yeast pitched may have been slightly different. The temperature may have been a few degrees higher/lower between batches… so many reasons can change that “visible ferments” characteristics.

As others have said, don’t worry about it, it really is tough to screw up a beer contamination wise, unless you scrimp on your sanitation. That’s the joy of homebrewing. Every batch, even with the same process & recipe is just a little different.

If you’re nervouse about it, bottle it up, and ship it out to me. I’ll QA the batch, and let you know how it was! :smiley:

TESTIFY! CAN I GET AN AMEN!

I’ve got to get my Ipswich ale clone into secondary for it’s dryhopping this evening. It’s been in the primary for about 4 weeks now. (no, I’m not worried about yeast breakdown yet.) And I’ve got to get MY wort chiller curled up and plumbed. I scored 40’ of 3/8" copper from my BIL! :cool: And come up with a new recipe to throw onto the yeast cake this evening. Now that’s worrysome! :smiley:

18

Alpha King is one of my favorites. “100s of IBUs” is a little misleading though. The solubility limit of BUs is somewhere around 110-120, but in practice it’s pretty tough to actually achieve much over 80. You lose a lot during fermentation.

Homebrewers actually have an advantage here, they can get more bitterness to stay in solution due to lower losses from trub, etc.

Alton Brown’s homebrewing episode was useful as a very basic intro to the craft, but some of his methods were a little sketchy, IMO.

19

Oh I wish I could claim I knew what I was doing, but alas no that is not the case. For me to explain though, I’ll have to give you a little bit of my psychology here. I spend my life being anal retentive about chemical reactions. I mean if you think worrying about bacterial contamination is a problem, imagine having to make sure it never came into contact with ANY oxygen or ANY water, all the while maintaining its temperature below –70 ˚C (Think about how much water is condensing around your flask at that temperature.) Oxygen is just plain insidious.

Now when I started homebrewing, I was treating everything like a threat to my beer. I did all the standard controls and what not. I sterilized everything like I was flame drying a flask for a reaction. Bit by bit, the controls began to deteriorate. I think it started with monitoring the Specific Gravity. I just can’t be bothered anymore. Bit by bit I began to realize that my beer was coming out OK. I started brewing beer without even bothering to do the dishes or wipe the counter before hand. Still, no problem. So now my attitude is “Screw the rules!” I’ve had enough of rules! So here’s what happened with this beer that I’m pretty sure is contaminated:

It all started about 2 1/2 years ago. That’s right, this particular batch began its life 2 1/2 years ago. I had this grand plan that I was going to culture some yeast. So I took the sludge from a previous batch and pitched it into a 1/2 gallon container. I waited until the yeast had just gotten active and stuck it in the fridge. Then I for some reason went on a 2 year brewing hiatus. Hey I’ve still got to graduate you know.

Another lab worker of mine began brewing so I decided to get started. Finally I looked in my fridge and decided I would do something about this yeast I was trying to culture. Adding to the fact that the batch was 2 years old, the airlock had long since gone dry. I started a thread about it somewhere. The dominant response I got was that the yeast is dead, but I was not detered. Out of the millions of yeast cells in that sludge there had to be one lucky survivor I figured, so I added some more malt put it in a larger fermenter and waited. I turned the temperature up in the room just to give it a kick. Two weeks later, nothing. But wait… I think there was something. Something growing very very slowly, but forming some weird things that started at the top. I waited another week, but I could not be certain they were growing. Finally, I threw in the towel and added some new yeast. It took off like a flash.

Now I was pretty drunk when I made this batch, so I’m not sure what all went in it. It was a recipe all of my own. I used light malt extract and some saaz hops. On a whim I added a bottle of fake maple syrup and half a bottle of lime juice. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not a hops fan, so I cut the boil time and added most of the hops towards the end of the boil. Then I used my pitched yeast and got a good fermentation going very quickly. Then horror…

I had forgotten to steep my grains. I don’t know what all went in there, but I think there was some rice somethings some barley some stuff for head retention…All of it was fairly light stuff. So about two weeks ago I boiled my grains in water and added some yeast. Then when I transfered it to the secondary fermentor I added my grain “tea”. I expected to see at least a little activity, but I saw none. When I smelled it a week ago, it smelled sweet. Not normal sweet, weird sweet. Since I didn’t see any activity, I figured I’d add some more yeast on monday. When I did, it didn’t smell sweet anymore, it smelled off…somehow. Well I don’t care I need that fermentor for my Oreo beer so I’m bottling it this weekend. Worse comes to worse will make drinking it a challenge and the last one to wretch wins. I can always buy beer so I really don’t give a damn if I produce anything drinkable.

20

So this “beer” has among it’s ingredients:[ul]
[li] 2 year old yeast sludge (with added unknown bacterial goodness!)[/li][li] Fake maple syrup[/li][li] Lime juice[/li][li] Boiled (!) grain tea[/ul][/li]
Call me a pessimist, but I have a feeling it’s not going to taste all that great.