Brewing Activities June 2016

It sounds like you somewhat did a version of "pitching on the yeast cake", i.e. when a brewer immediately pitches a wort onto a fresh yeast cake from the primary of a prior batch immediately after bottling. The issue with that approach is potential "over" pitching, though many debate whether or not "over" pitching is a concern unless you are making a beer where the yeast esters are important.

Your best practice under this scenario is to use a calculator, available online, to determine how much yeast slurry is appropriate to pitch into your new beer.

Personally, I am a cheap homebrewer and reuse yeast all the time. I usually do a three yeast rotation (lager, English, third wheel which could be american ale, belgian, hefe) and brew approximately every three weeks, so any given yeast that I am using will be reused 9 weeks from the last pitch or approximately 6 weeks from when harvested assuming three week primary. I usually reuse the whole of my harvested yeast because of the loss of viability over 6 weeks. I don't make starters for these strains. With this method I have never had problems with stuck ferments, failed ferments, under attenuation etc.

 

That sounds like a pretty good cycle of brewing! We have still not had a truly great beer turn out, so we have been trying to brew more often to get our cadence solidified. Must be having some failure in the process. The beer has been fine, but it hasn't been good enough for me to want to let my friends try. The last IPA we did I thought was going to be the ticket, but lost all of its juicyness after bottling. I have my fingers crossed for the hefe that is in bottles, and the one that is in Primary now.

Which by the way has been fermenting amazingly well it seems!

 

Stepping up some Cantillon dregs from 3 bottles to use in a lambic inspired beer. Started with 300ml on a stir plate with foil over the jug, planning on stepping it up to 750ml then 1.5l then pitching it if it smells good. Anyone have any experience with 100% lambic dreg fermentation? I've used sacch + dregs before but never just dregs.

 

How's the one doing from your hop garden? I just put 3 outside the other night (had some leftover starter wort so I lightly hopped it and put some cheesecloth on them). The only one that's showing signs of fermentation is the jar that sat under my hop bines.

 

Just two thoughts on your IPA falling off quickly. My guess would be two potential reasons - either water or oxidation.

I've brewed using municipal water from Cincinnati, Sidney (north of Dayton), and two different homes with well water. None were good water sources for IPA brewing, with the hops always fading incredibly fast. I couldn't make a great IPA until I started using built up RO water. I'm not sure what you are currently using for brewing water, but if you want to keep going at IPAs consider building a water profile from RO or distilled.

On the other hand, Ohio water is great for porters/stouts.

 

Yea, that'll be awesome! Those other 2 will definitely make for a good wild ale down the road.

My 'weeping cherry tree' one has an ant floating in it somehow, and the 'compost pile' one may or may not work to my favor. I'll post results on the aromas and a photo once I start seeing some visible signs.

 

1 more week of flower sales, then a brewing blitz. but so far
added 6 lb raspberries to the Belgian brew, battled 7 gallons of big ipa using London ale III and finally doing a run and gun brewing with a pro brewer, Beer to be made unknown. He is not used to the Frankie methodology!

 

Glad I got that IPA brewday in last week since my keg of the current version just kicked last night

 

That gurgling noise is a very jarring way to experience the death of a loved one

 

Luckily it was right at the end of filling the pint glass and not the beginning. I always hate getting just what sat in the line for 3 days in the glass and then boom! No! I was so looking forward to a pint of that beer! Damnitt!!!

 

Did yeast starter for IRS that I'm going to brew this weekend. The foam stopper fell right into the starter. I was in a rush to get to my daughter's concert so I quickly dunked a few tools into Starsan to get said stopper out. Did not soak as long as I would have liked but I got it out and am now hoping for the best.

Any tips on detecting an infected starter?

 

After doing a bunch of kettle sours, neipas, and brett beers for the last dozen batches, this time I've gone with an humble old standby: a dark mild. Trying a few tweaks to my recipe though.
2-row, 18% Fawcett medium crystal, 4% victory, 3% pale chocolate, 25IBU, 1.037OG, 28g of EKG @0, and of course, good old WLP002.

 

Last night I kegged my American Pale Ale. Can't wait to try it as the hydrometer samples have been quite tasty. Brewing RIS on Friday night or Saturday.

 

I've seen people talk about doing brief "starters" to "wake up" the yeast, but I've seen no evidence that it's actually beneficial. It's possible that it could even be detrimental, i.e. putting the yeast through an additional feeding cycle that doesn't result in increased cell count. (Active yeast is subject to stresses that dormant yeast is not.) My gut feeling is that it probably doesn't do much one way or the other. Anyway, yeast will wake up when they are added to the main batch wort regardless.

 

Thanks for the thoughts!

There was a hard Krasuen line within the original primary. We had wanted to clean that up before we added new wort to said primary that was housing the yeast cake. Do you know if that was necessary? The thought was to just get good yeast out of there to enable cleaning while brewing up a new batch.

 

If I were going to reuse my primary yeast the same day, I would sanitize another container (I use gallon water jugs with a funnel), pour the yeast cake (leave some beer at the bottom to loosen or some cooled boiled water) into the container, and then clean and sanitize the primary again for reuse. You can then use a calculator to determine how much of the yeast slurry to add to the new batch.

 

I wouldn't necessarily advocate re-using the fermenter without cleaning and sanitizing. I was just commenting on the (non) need to feed the yeast a small amount of wort before re-using it.

 

Racked both my Citra IPA and French Saison to secondary today and dry hopped with Cirta and Cascade and the Saison with Armarilo. Everything looking good so far.

Cheers, happy June brewing.

 

just brewed up another pale ale and modified the recipe i've been using a little bit. this time i used honey malt for the steeping grains along with some oats. falconer's flight 7Cs for the hops. split the DME additions; put half in at the the start of the boil and added the rest 20 minutes later. and i'm "steeping" the final hop addition for 20 minutes before chilling the wort.

now, the waiting game.