Racking troubles

Last night, I transfered the beer in my primary into my carboy on the fourth day. Last night, the bung popped out of the carboy and made a mess onto the floor. I know now for sure that I racked a few days too early, my reasoning was when I did the boil, a lot of the hops got out of the hop sack and ended up in the primary.. So to avoid creating a grassy brew, I decided to rack it.

Right now the beer is transfered back into the primary. My question is, should I leave it there for another day or two to finish off? or should I just get it straight into the carboy and leave it for the next two weeks? My concern is that a lot of the yeast is gone, and I'm not sure if the remaining yeast will reproduce back to it's original numbers and continue the fermentation.

As it stands, this has been an interesting brew. My intention was to make an IPA, but it has turned out to be a belgian style much like La Fin Du Monde (from Canada, Im not sure if people in the states are able to get their hands on it).

Thanks in advance for the help

Daren

Sounds like you are creating problems trying to fix "problems" that don't exist.

Fermentation is going to continue. You've undoubtedly slowed it down, but there were enough yeast in suspension and sugar to eat that they blew the top off your carboy! Just leave it alone - and let it ferment out before touching it again.

Thanks for the advice, I'll leave it sit for a couple days more. As it stands after just an hour or so I can already see a lot of activity going on in the primary (top is pushing upwards, and foam is starting to form on top).

So, leaving hops from the boil in the primary won't necessarily leave a "grassy" taste in the brew?

No. If you are using pellet hops, a good amount of them are going to make it into the fermenter no matter what type of bag you put them in. You probably don't want to let pounds of them float in, but that doesn't sound like what happened.

And really, most IPA call for you to dry hop with lots of extra hops in the fermenter for a week. If you overdo that, you can get some grassy notes, but the scale we are talking about it is much higher than what got out of the sack in your boil.

Daren_Z said:

Thanks for the advice, I'll leave it sit for a couple days more. As it stands after just an hour or so I can already see a lot of activity going on in the primary (top is pushing upwards, and foam is starting to form on top).

So, leaving hops from the boil in the primary won't necessarily leave a "grassy" taste in the brew?

Click to expand...

Why only a couple days? Fermentation usually takes more than a few days. Wait 2-3 weeks then take gravity readings. Stop messing with your beer.

And how do you know your IPA came out like du Monde?

The way I was originally taught (by a chemical engineer) was to leave the beer in the primary for 4-6 days, then transfer to the carboy for 2 weeks. Is leaving it in the primary for 2 weeks a better option?

I know the beer tastes like La Fin Du Monde because I took a gravity reading when I transfered it into the carboy. And well, you might as well taste the beer thats left over in the cylinder.

Of course, thimgs will change with time, but it's a decent measure of where it's going.

There are about as many ways to brew beer as there are brewers.

Personally, I just ferment in the primary, crash cool and package. My rationale is to get the maximum cleanup power of the yeast and then let the crash cool compensate for any clearing advantages a secondary might have.

Some of the "old" homebrewing ideas were put out there by professional brewers. Some things don't just scale down though. eg fears of dying yeast causing off flavors if you don't secondary the beer quickly. That might well be true with multiple tons of water pressure cranked down on the yeast cake, but it just doesn't seem to be an issue in a 5 gallon batch.

well how did it turn out ?

Not bad actually. I was pretty impressed. 5% alcohol, medium body, still sour kind of like a belgian.. I think it had a bit of a souring infection because of that, but it works well with the hops I think (maybe I'm in denial? Who knows.)

So which yeast did you use ?

I used a liquid APA yeast.