Super Newbie Question

I just started fermenting my first beer last night! It was awesome. Just wondering, I read a little further on fermenting today, and realized that I had made a pretty big error. When I had cooled the wort and was pouring it into my fermentor, instead of straining off all the gunk left over from the hot break and the other assorted sediment, I actually scooped it all into the fermentor to brew. Then I read today that that's pretty bad. SOOOOOOOO....

I wasn't planning on doing two stage, but would I be able to salvage this beer if I strain out that gunk during secondary? I only have a plastic bottling bucket to use as a secondary.

Anyone out there know or can help me? Sure would love to have good beer the first time out!!! Thanks.

Mike

Leave it alone, it will be fine. In a perfect world you would like to leave your hot and cold break behind but your beer will be alright.

Thanks. So don't even bother with secondary?

Guess I'm just worried about "off-flavors" in the beer... been reading John Palmer...

The only time I will secondary is if I'm doing a fruit beer or dry hopping a ton, like 4 ounces). Many will have differing opinions.

mgurf1 said:

Guess I'm just worried about "off-flavors" in the beer... been reading John Palmer...

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There are many many variables in brewing. The biggest thing in my opinion is to create your baseline and adjust from there on. When I make adjustments, I make one change at a time only and see how the beer is changed by that one thing. If you do multiple things, from suggestions you get in the forums, you don't really know which of the things you did, made your beer better or even worse.

In regards to your dilema, if it were me, I would leave it as is and use that as your baseline sample, knowing that it femented with hot and cold break. Then you can start making adjustments with future batches and dial in your process.

I personally don't think you will have a problem with yeast autolysis if they were healthy to begin with.

I did the same thing with my first batch and it was fine. It may not have been the best that it could have been, but everyone who tried it agreed that it was good beer.

Thanks both of you. I guess also the chances of me accidentally oxidizing the beer when I transfer it to secondary is probably worse anyways. And I'm attempting to make a British bitter ale, so I guess if it comes out a little bitter, that's cool too...

mgurf1 said:

Thanks both of you. I guess also the chances of me accidentally oxidizing the beer when I transfer it to secondary is probably worse anyways. And I'm attempting to make a British bitter ale, so I guess if it comes out a little bitter, that's cool too...

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I'm pretty sure your beer is completely ruined.
You should proceed with fermentation and bottling and send results to me.

mgurf1 said:

Guess I'm just worried about "off-flavors" in the beer... been reading John Palmer...

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You need to read a little deeper into Palmer.

Rather than the yeast being the cause of off flavors, it is now looked at by many of us, that they will if left alone actually remove those off flavors, and make for clearer and cleaner tasting beers.

You'll find that a great many folks, maybe even the majority on here these days, leave their beers in primary for 3-4 weeks, skipping secondary. Many of us even dry hop in primary, and only rack to secondary if we are adding oak or fruit, or had fruit in the boil or primary and left lots of trub behind.

John Palmer talks about this in How To Brew;

How To Brew said:

Leaving an ale beer in the primary fermentor for a total of 2-3 weeks (instead of just the one week most canned kits recommend), will provide time for the conditioning reactions and improve the beer. This extra time will also let more sediment settle out before bottling, resulting in a clearer beer and easier pouring. And, three weeks in the primary fermentor is usually not enough time for off-flavors to occur.

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And this;

John Palmer

As a final note on this subject, I should mention that by brewing with healthy yeast in a well-prepared wort, many experienced brewers, myself included, have been able to leave a beer in the primary fermenter for several months without any evidence of autolysis.

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People have left it as much as six months.

This is where the most up to date brewing wisdom and ideas can be found...In fact a lot of stuff has been started on here, and made it into byo or zymurgy or podcasts...in fact BYO DID a piece on no secondary/long primary, along with the BASIC BREWING PODCAST and even they said that there were no issues/harm with doing it and in some beers it did actually improve the flavor and clarity. And I believe that really WAS influenced by the discussion we have had for the last couple years on here.

Your beer should be crystal clear, very clean and crisp tasting. And when you rack to bottle you leave behind a really dense yeast/trub cake.


Believe me, after three years of doing the long primary/ no secondary I find no need to go back to doing it any other way. The quality of my beers has upped 10 ten fold.

As have my judging scores in contests. There's at least one beer among the 3-4 different one's I enter in contests where a judge notes the clarity and crisp taste of my beers- One was even described as "Jewell like in appearance." I just got a Bronze in the World Expo of Beer contest for one of my month in primary, no secondary beers.

mgurf1 said:

Thanks both of you. I guess also the chances of me accidentally oxidizing the beer when I transfer it to secondary is probably worse anyways.

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I wouldn't be the oxidation that would concern me, it is more the sanitation. Just another thing to have to worry about with a secondary in my opinion.

I keg so I have CO2 on hand so I always purge my carboys of oxygen prior to racking onto fruit or dryhopping.

mgurf1 said:

And I'm attempting to make a British bitter ale, so I guess if it comes out a little bitter, that's cool too...

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Why are you concerned it will be overly bitter? What was your recipe?

Revvy-

Thanks for this. I'm wondering your thoughts on the sediment I left in the fermenter (from the hot break)? I was thinking of racking to secondary in an attempt to get the yeast away from all that gunk once most of the active fermenting dies down.

Mike

I'm not concerned about overly bitter, Catch-22... I guess I just worried I ruined things by pouring all that crap in my fermenter.

mgurf1 said:

... I'm wondering your thoughts on the sediment I left in the fermenter (from the hot break)?

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Hijacking (not Revvy here) - I've never filtered from boil kettle to fermenter. It all goes in. It all settles out. (since 2001) - biggest things to improve my beers were good yeast pitching rates, practicing patience (allowing time), and temperature control.

yours will be fine. Really.

After a month you have a tight trub, you leave it behind when you rack to your keg or bottling bucket. Half the time I don't even remember to add moss in the boil. Gravity and time works wonders.

Thanks everyone! This site rocks!

If you add oak to your primary how long do you leave them there? Thanks.

earwig said:

If you add oak to your primary how long do you leave them there? Thanks.

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No more than 2 weeks, unless you want to be mellowing your beer for several months. I'm about to crack a year old oaked beer to see if there is any oak left, iirc, I oaked it for 3 weeks...took several months to mellow out.

earwig said:

If you add oak to your primary how long do you leave them there? Thanks.

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I'm going to somewhat disagree with Revvy, although I entirely believe his answer, I think a more complex answer is worth giving.

To some extent it depends on what type of oak you use. If you use chips, it will take less time to extract all of the flavor they have. If you use cubes it will lend more complex oak flavors, but it will take longer to impart some of those flavors. Another important variable is how much oak you use. I have a mead that's been on oak cubes for a while now. The bag I bought suggested 2-3 oz. per 5 gallons IIRC, while most sources I found suggest 1-2 oz. I put in 1.25 oz. and I am leaving them in there for a few months.

What choices you make for amount and type of oak will vary based on style of beer. If I were oaking something like a basic porter or IPA that doesn't need much aging, I would use chips and not leave it for long and/or use a small amount of oak. If I were oaking a barleywine, I would probably do something similar to what I'm doing with the mead.

It also comes down to personal preference. It may take some trial and error to find out how much oak you need to add and how long you want to leave it in order to best fit your tastes.

I just cracked a year old bottle of my old bog road brown ale (from my pulldown). I was surprised that at a year in the bottle it still retained an intense oakiness. As stated throughout the forums I used a fist full of Jack Daniels Oak Smoking chips, soaked for a month in more jack, in secondary for iirc 3 weeks.

And initially it was way to woody. Liked you choked on it.

And it did decrease over the months I was drinking it.

But it was a pleasant surprise that a year old bottle would still have any oaked character remaining, but it did, and it was much less rough, much softer than it was.

So maybe slowbie's experience is different. But all I can say is that even a couple of weeks will impart a strong oak flavor, no matter what type it is. And the counter of it is simply time...it will surprisingly NOT vanish, but will soften and mellow with time.

I'm curious as to whether the use of smoking chips is different than using oak chips intended for homebrewing. Also, depending on how big your hands are, a fistfull could be well over 2 ounces, which could be a lot of oak flavor really quickly. I don't have very big hands and I think I'd get at least 2 ounces in a fistful based on the oak cubes. This is all speculation of course, and much of what I know about oaking comes from the extensive reading I did before oaking my mead.

Mods, maybe this should split off into a new thread starting with earwig's question?