About 5 or so batches ago, I stumbled across this little trick I thought I'd share.
I started collecting a bit of leftover wort after transferring to my primary and fermenting in a side fermentor, which is a glass 1L milk bottle in my case. It's come in handy for so many reasons.
Whether you're extract or all grain, you've probably experienced this -- after transferring as much wort as you can into your primary, you're still left with a thin layer of what looks like clear, usable wort settled out on top of your trub. I thought, hey, why not do something with that stuff too?
And boy am I glad I did, for a lot of reasons. I can now dip into a smaller, less important fermentor whenever I'm feeling impatient to see how the beer is coming along. A few times I've decided to bottle the contents early and dry-hop right in the bottle to figure out how I wanted to dry hop the main batch. And most recently, I was able to use it as a side by side comparison after accidentally contaminating a batch of barleywine to see if the main batch had gone south. (Thankfully, it hadn't.)
My process goes something like this. After racking the usable wort, I cover my kettle and let it sit for at least another half hour to help settle out anything kicked up during the transfer. I use a (clean!) turkey baster to grab the top layer as best I can; at this point it doesn't really matter too much how much trub is picked up, but since my baster has a fairly narrow metal tip I'm able to collect more wort than trub. After filling the bottle 3/4 of the way or so, I tip in a bit of yeast, cover with plastic wrap and an elastic, place it in a shallow bowl to catch any overflowing krausen, and then watch it ferment alongside my main carboy.
Without temperature control, and because it's a smaller volume, it tends to finish out a lot quicker than the main carboy, so I can get a preview of what the final beer might taste like while keeping in mind it's only a preview, and the actual batch will be different. I've done it enough to know that if it's tasting good in the second fermentor, it's tasting great in the carboy.
I probably won't do it for every batch in the future, but any time I'm trying out a new recipe it's a great way to keep tabs on how it's coming along.
I started collecting a bit of leftover wort after transferring to my primary and fermenting in a side fermentor, which is a glass 1L milk bottle in my case. It's come in handy for so many reasons.
Whether you're extract or all grain, you've probably experienced this -- after transferring as much wort as you can into your primary, you're still left with a thin layer of what looks like clear, usable wort settled out on top of your trub. I thought, hey, why not do something with that stuff too?
And boy am I glad I did, for a lot of reasons. I can now dip into a smaller, less important fermentor whenever I'm feeling impatient to see how the beer is coming along. A few times I've decided to bottle the contents early and dry-hop right in the bottle to figure out how I wanted to dry hop the main batch. And most recently, I was able to use it as a side by side comparison after accidentally contaminating a batch of barleywine to see if the main batch had gone south. (Thankfully, it hadn't.)
My process goes something like this. After racking the usable wort, I cover my kettle and let it sit for at least another half hour to help settle out anything kicked up during the transfer. I use a (clean!) turkey baster to grab the top layer as best I can; at this point it doesn't really matter too much how much trub is picked up, but since my baster has a fairly narrow metal tip I'm able to collect more wort than trub. After filling the bottle 3/4 of the way or so, I tip in a bit of yeast, cover with plastic wrap and an elastic, place it in a shallow bowl to catch any overflowing krausen, and then watch it ferment alongside my main carboy.
Without temperature control, and because it's a smaller volume, it tends to finish out a lot quicker than the main carboy, so I can get a preview of what the final beer might taste like while keeping in mind it's only a preview, and the actual batch will be different. I've done it enough to know that if it's tasting good in the second fermentor, it's tasting great in the carboy.
I probably won't do it for every batch in the future, but any time I'm trying out a new recipe it's a great way to keep tabs on how it's coming along.
