DAAB

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A beer in which autolysis has set in will have a very prominent and distinctive taste of burnt rubber and is completely undrinkable. There is no definitive time period in which it will set in as it depends on the health of the yeast which is another reason to make correct sized yeast starters. It's a game of chance as to how long you can get away with leaving the beer on the yeast cake but if your yeast is healthy, 2-3 weeks in the primary is fine, you can get away with leaving it much longer however the longer you leave it the greater the risk of autolysis is.

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My 'How to Homebrew Pages'

e lo

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Psst ... I've designed any number of viruses in my day, and some bacterial strains, to boot. Hell, I've even designed some mice, which are making up the majority of my thesis!

RoaringBrewer

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Brewed a special bitter before (read: not a strong beer OG-wise - maybe 1.045) and it got left in the primary for, oh... at least 6-7 weeks. Turned out to be one of the better beers I brewed.

However, this was in a basement, fermenting at low 60s, so who knows... I normally do a 3 week primary or so and make better beer since when I switched over from 1-2-3 method of my newb days.

I do usually always use a new packet of yeast each time I brew (I never reuse dry yeast)... I use dry more than liquid, so I've never even reused a liquid yeast more than twice. That will change in the future as I plan to brew a series of belgians, all with the same Abbey Ale yeast...

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Roaring Bull Brewing Co.
Est. 2006
http://www.cafepress.com/roaringbull

Currently Consuming (HB): Apfelwein on Tap Troegs Hopback on Tap; Craft Bottles
Fermenting/Conditioning: Up Next: Hop Trio American Wheat, Lake Walk Pale Ale
In Planning Stage: Farmhouse Saison and Something Oaked.

BlendieOfIndie

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Well you're prolly right in the sense that there's not a bio engineer sitting @ an autocad screen rearranging genes

But where do these new yeast strains come from? Are they not merely mutations of other yeast strains? If so, then I'd take it that many mutations are not very helpful. Therefore a yeast producer would need to weed out the bad mutations & only select the good ones. If this is indeed the process that occurs, then I would definitely call this "designing." If I'm incorrect (this IS just speculation) then I'd be interested in how new strains do come about

HP_Lovecraft

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It was also a topic that confused me when I came to this forum.

All my books were very clear in that you should leave your beer in your primary FOR AT LEAST 10 days to make sure you remove any DMS or Diacetyl. But never longer then 30 days because thats when autolysis can start.

In reality, they were probobly just being extremely conservative. I suspect autolysis is one of those things that depends on a 100 different factors. Like OG, strain, temp, aeration, pitching amount, time, etc.

nick