Homebrewers - Whats Fermenting?
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Question
If I brew the same day I keg a previous batch, can I pitch some of the yeast in the old fermenter to the new batch? Or does it need to be "washed" first. The yeast is US-05 and is currently fermenting a 5% session IPA. The next brew that I would pitch into is a 7% Two Hearted clone.
From what I have read, you don't want to rack directly onto an entire cake because it would be over pitched. In addition, I believe I have read that dry yeasts should not be used for more than a couple generations.
Any help is appreciated.
If I brew the same day I keg a previous batch, can I pitch some of the yeast in the old fermenter to the new batch? Or does it need to be "washed" first. The yeast is US-05 and is currently fermenting a 5% session IPA. The next brew that I would pitch into is a 7% Two Hearted clone.
From what I have read, you don't want to rack directly onto an entire cake because it would be over pitched. In addition, I believe I have read that dry yeasts should not be used for more than a couple generations.
Any help is appreciated.
I sometimes pour off some of the yeast cake from the fermenter and then just transfer onto what is left. Never washed any yeast or for that matter had any off flavors for pitching directly onto a full yeast cake single or double pitched. What I never do is use a yeast cake more than two times because of mutation dry yeast or liquid.
Hops are hard on yeast. You probably won't have any off flavors using the same yeast, but depending on the hop levels of the first beer the yeast may be stressed and not do their best work.
I have 2 fermenters (5g each) and I'll be brewing 10 gallons split into 2 fermenters. Can I discard half of each cake and rack onto each of them?
So Ive been reading about this low oxygen stuff for a bit and decided to give one of the techniques a try. The idea is to add dry yeast(13g) and a small amount of sugar(13g DME or 7g dextrose) to the mash water(8gal), then waiting ~30 mins, to scavenge the oxygen and bring the DO levels down. I coupled this with their direction of adding sodium metabisulfite(campden tablets) at a rate of about 1 tab per gallon of mash water. The idea here being the sulfite acts as a buffer to scavenge any O2 taken in during the mash and turns it into SO4. All of this being said to have a big difference in malt character and flavor stability. For the price of an old pack of dry yeast and 13g DME I figured why the hell not. Now the whole write up sort of has an all or nothing opinion on how low the DO levels need to be but Im interested in seeing if making any dents in bringing down the DO levels improves overall flavor/stability.
Overall the sulfite increase was about equal to adding 4g of gypsum which is pretty much a baseline addition for water treatment on hoppy beers. So I decided to roll with a malty APA. Heres what I went with...
Batch Size - 5.25gal
OG - 1.050
FG - 1.010
IBU - 36.2
ABV - 5.2%
Yeast - Notty
Grain Bill
9# Vienna
8oz Fawcett Amber
4oz White Wheat
4oz Acid
Boil
1oz Mosaic @ 15 min
1oz Falconers 7Cs @ 10 min
Whirlfloc
1oz Mosaic @ flameout
Dry Hop - 1oz Mosaic + 1oz 7Cs
Overall the sulfite increase was about equal to adding 4g of gypsum which is pretty much a baseline addition for water treatment on hoppy beers. So I decided to roll with a malty APA. Heres what I went with...
Batch Size - 5.25gal
OG - 1.050
FG - 1.010
IBU - 36.2
ABV - 5.2%
Yeast - Notty
Grain Bill
9# Vienna
8oz Fawcett Amber
4oz White Wheat
4oz Acid
Boil
1oz Mosaic @ 15 min
1oz Falconers 7Cs @ 10 min
Whirlfloc
1oz Mosaic @ flameout
Dry Hop - 1oz Mosaic + 1oz 7Cs
damn you dude!! And those old perlicks are sexy as all hell. I only have one of them and the rest are the newer models. Did you turn those tap handles??
Smores Porter got kegged up today. Didn't get as much graham cracker as I wanted but the addition of some vanilla bean and honey bourbon bring out the marshmallow and there is plenty of chocolate. The stuff is crazy good even flat.
Two boxes of graham crackers in the mash for an 11gal batch. Next time I will do 3 or 4 boxes and I will crush them up some before adding instead of leaving whole
Crazy busy beer morning. I've got my pipeline maxed out which has been a juggling act to coordinate. I tried a new method of souring a Berliner in a sanitizer/co2 purged corny which worked excellent. I got that racked to pasteurize in the kettle, cleaned out the keg and kegged up an Amber. Then turned around and cleaned that carboy so I could rack yesterday's Weizenbock off the cold break and pitch. After that was done I had to get that fermenter cleaned up and ready for the Berliner coming out of the kettle. I think it's time for a smoke!
FWIW I figured I'd outline the new souring procedure. I think it's a big step in the right direction and will enable me to sour for longer periods without picking up any funk. Carboys work well but each day the headspace gets a little bigger and bring some subtle funk. All you need is a spigot off your kettle, a piece of tubing with a liquid side QD and another with a gas side QD, and to make sure your kettle sits high enough above your keg to use gravity to transfer.
Fill your keg until it's over flowing with sanitizer and seal it up, hook it up to gas and completely empty the keg. Hose clamp the tubing to the spigot and connect the QD to the 'Out' post, connect the gas QD to the 'In' post and put the other end of the tubing in a bucket of sanitizer. Now all you have to do is open the spigot and fill the keg. Compared to an empty carboy full of air the amount of O2 pickup this cuts down on is pretty significant. I'm only smelling the results of my first go at this but I think it's the way to go for a super clean sour.
FWIW I figured I'd outline the new souring procedure. I think it's a big step in the right direction and will enable me to sour for longer periods without picking up any funk. Carboys work well but each day the headspace gets a little bigger and bring some subtle funk. All you need is a spigot off your kettle, a piece of tubing with a liquid side QD and another with a gas side QD, and to make sure your kettle sits high enough above your keg to use gravity to transfer.
Fill your keg until it's over flowing with sanitizer and seal it up, hook it up to gas and completely empty the keg. Hose clamp the tubing to the spigot and connect the QD to the 'Out' post, connect the gas QD to the 'In' post and put the other end of the tubing in a bucket of sanitizer. Now all you have to do is open the spigot and fill the keg. Compared to an empty carboy full of air the amount of O2 pickup this cuts down on is pretty significant. I'm only smelling the results of my first go at this but I think it's the way to go for a super clean sour.
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