That Was Fast

Fermentation - the part where the yeast converts sugar to alcohol and other, less interesting stuff takes only a couple of days, in my experience. Obviously, a 1.101 beer will take longer, but I wouldn't expect much more, either. Keep in mind, though, there's a lot more for the yeast to do, so you don't want to rush things. I typically let my 'normal' beers (<1.060 or so) sit for at least three weeks. Bigger beers go a month or more. There's really no need to hurry it along, unless, of course, your pipeline has dried up! That's why you really should keep busy.

 

Do you plan to secondary, and if so, for approximately how long? Curious because I imagine some sort of exponential curve (up to a point) for necessary aging for bigger and bigger imperial stout type beers. [ABV verses necessary aging time graph]

Anybody who wishes to chime in on this (pretty generalized) question, feel free. I am not an experienced imperial stout maker, with n=0.

 

I go 5-6 weeks in primary on bigger beers (checking gravity beginning on week 5), then bottle and allow the bottles to condition indefinitely until consumption, but a minimum of a month. My goal in doing it this way is to ensure that the yeast is actually finished with the beer, but still viable enough to carbonate the bottles.

 

If I did not bottle condition, I would go 6-8 weeks in primary, verify stable gravity, and keg.

 

I don't bother checking gravity to see if fermentation is complete. in my experience, three weeks is plenty for a small beer, a month for a big beer (actually, a week is probably overkill for both). I take a gravity reading at that point just to confirm that fermentation has, indeed, occurred, and to update my notes. That happens on kegging day. The only time I actually do anything based on gravity is when it's grossly under-attenuated.

 

The times I've had big beers ferment that fast the temps got real high for at least a day. How did you control the fermentation temp? Was that 68F the ambient temp?

 

Like rocdoc1 says, big beers get hot. And I will add, having the ambient temperature low enough to keep the fermenting beer under control slows things down a bit. I had a 1.090 OG beer fail to finish in 4 weeks in a 60°F space (wort temperature was close to 70° at its peak). The gravity dropped another 5 points going into week 6. So I just wait a bit longer before I even start checking, since I don't want to end up checking it a half dozen times or more.

Of course, if you have a need to hurry, then you can start checking after a week, but if you planned a big investment on the ingredients and time to make a RIS, then why not plan to let the yeast have plenty of time to get the best result you can? If you don't believe extra time on the yeast is beneficial, then I'm not sure what this discussion is about.

 

Have you tasted this beer yet? Is it alcohol hot or smooth? Be honest. If it's hot leave it in primary an extra 2 weeks, that'll help smooth it out.

 

It was S-04, too; in my hands at least, that one can run hot even on 14-15 Plato worts. But it will go fast, thats for sure.

I understand it's contrary to the prevailing wisdom around here but I'd transfer to a secondary (carefully & to a properly CO2-purged secondary) and let it condition there. Enough yeast to do what clean-up is left to do will make the trip, and the risk of all that voracious S-04 starting to eat itself is eliminated. Though I acknowledge that among home brewers the prevailing wisdom is that there's no meaningful risk of autolysis in our application, and that the risk of infection and oxidation in the transfer outweighs the risk of autolysis, I don't buy it 100% and this is exactly the set up where I would think it might go the other way.

 

I used to transfer all of my bigger beers to a carboy to secondary, but have been open to experimentation and found that both primary-only and a secondary seems to result in a good finished beer. My bigger beers are always bottle conditioned, too, getting an additional period of conditioning until consumption.

 

I left big beers(over 1.080 OG) in primary for a month, then transferred to kegs and let them sit until I was ready for them. The extra time in primary allowed the fusels created by high fermentation temps to either be dealt with by yeast or evaporate(I don't understand the cleanup process but I know it works), then bulk aging in the serving keg really cleared the beer up.