Hello to all. I recently put up a batch of nettle beer, made from a 10-liter wort of nettles, dandelion leaves and root, and ground ivy with around 150 g of sugar (granulated cane sugar) per liter. I cooled the wort well before adding my yeast. This was yeast I recovered from a bottle of Maredsous ale by adding sugar and water to the bottle; I had good yeast activity when I removed the cork to pour the yeast mixture into the wort. I poured the wort into a 10-liter carboy and added an airlock. A week later, in a cellar that's at around 18° C, I still see no activity in the airlock. Yesterday I started a batch of regular beer - Triple style - using extract and vacuum-packed hops and candi sugar, also a 10-liter batch. I used GV12 yeast from Muntons and mixed it with warm water and sugar. I saved some of this mixture and poured it into the nettle-beer carboy. Now, less than 24 hours later and in the same cellar room where the nettle carboy is, with an identical carboy and airlock, the beer carboy is pumping out well over a bubble a second. But the nettle carboy still shows no activity other than a slight head of foam below the neck. I was wondering if anybody has an idea what might account for the difference in fermentation activity. Do the nettles, dandelions, or ground ivy contain anything that might inhibit fermentation? Or is the fact that I used sugar vs malt extract a factor? Any observations would be welcome. I should add that I'm pretty new at this and don't have a hygrometer yet, so I'm afraid I can't give you any info on gravity. TIA to all! Les
If you have some foam on the top of your nettle beer, then that's a good hint that fermentation has started. However, the air lock is not always reliable as an indicator that fermentation is occurring. The first thing that I would do is make sure that the air lock has no air leaks around the stopper, etc. If you used table sugar and pitched a viable quantity of yeast, things should happen. If the yeast was inadequate, then fermentation will be slow until those little puppies can reproduce a bit. This may be a case where having a hydrometer will tell you something for certain, so I'd recommend getting one as soon as you can to be able to take a status reading. In the meantime, leave the beer alone to do its thing.
Thanks for answering. Yeah, I had some wort left over and poured it into a swing-top bottle. When I unlatch the top, I get a little pressure release. So something is happening, but it's much more gentle than the beer batch. I'm now taking your advice and actively leaving the nettle alone ;-) Just a thought: Could the alkalinity in the nettles be attenuating fermentation?
I'm not heavily enough into this hobby to be able to respond to that question. Maybe someone else can comment, but if you know its acidity it would probably be helpful to provide that info.
Yes and yes. Rather it's what the yard clipping lack; namely an endosperm. The basis of beer fermentation is breaking down the endosperm of grain (barley, wheat, oats) into fermentable sugars. Roots and greenery are lacking an endosperm, dandelions would only have it in their flowering seeds. My guess is your OG was 1.000. Making a yeast starter with simple sugar only will condition the yeast to only react to simple sugars. I'm surprised you are getting any fermentation . . . but expect it to be under attenuated. You really want to use malt extract for your starter, every professional brewer in the world does it this way. Everything you need to know is at this link: http://www.howtobrew.com/
