How young is too young? NEED HELP QUICKLY!

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BeardedSquash

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Last weekend I brewed an Ordinary Bitter to be kegged and served at a friend's birthday gathering next weekend. I brewed it two weeks out; figuring four to five days in the primary (34 o.g.), a week to naturally carbonate in the keg, and two or three days to settle in the fridge. In an effort to go authentic, I dragged out the long forgotten Ale Pale so I could scrape off the krausen and imitate the english blow-off systems. But now I remembered why I quit using the Ale Pale; it's not air tight. My beer, which tasted great on day three, tasted like old cardboard on day four.

Long story long, I'm brewing this again but the homebrew store I order from had limited hours over the holiday, so I won't get my ingredients until Tuesday at the earliest. Basically, I will have five days to brew, ferment and carbonate (now force carbonate) my beer.

The plan is now to brew Tuesday, ferment through until Friday, drop the yeast by chilling the primary Friday night, and keg and quickly force carbonate Saturday morning. This will be served via handpump, so the carb level will be very low.

So my question is, I guess, does this sound feasible? I know this style is served young with live yeast, but is this getting too crazy?
 
your nuts. that is WAY to short a schedule to brew beer. the beer will be VERY green and probably wont taste good and may cause other problems for the drinker.
 
You will have a beer that is half finished, maybe. There are byproducts produced when the initial feeding frenzy of the yeast is over. Secondary fermentation is the clean-up stage where many of these are consumed by the remaining yeast.

Depends on how clean your fermentation is, how stable the fermentation temperature is and the character of the yeast.

For me, never before the fourteenth day!
 
I knew I would be forfeiting a diacyl rest, but I hadn't planned on endangering anyone.

To be honest, the last batch tasted fantastic at terminal gravity (after three days of fermenting at 69º) and I would be happy to recreate that flavor. I guess I was hoping that flavor would remain intact if I kegged from there, but it doesn't sound like that's going to happen.
 
My ale pail isn't airtight and I have no issues with oxidation. I've won awards for beers I brewed in it and I never get a single bubble in the airlock. I've brewed beers with tinfoil over the top of the pail and they came out great.

If you're having that trouble, then the lid isn't the issue. You're oxidizing it some other way.
 
Quick update, and a thank you to ChshreCat. Your post made me think – if you've brewed award winning beers in an ale pail, there's no reason mine should have staled in one over the course of 24 hours.

Luckily I knew better than to trash the first batch. I racked it into the secondary and threw it in the fridge to age while I figure all of this out. After reading ChreCat's post, I went to the fridge and tried the first batch again. The flavor that I had earlier attributed to cardboard was gone, replaced instead by the fruity, slightly sulfurous flavor of a traditional English Ale.

The lesson here, is to "Relax, don't worry, and have a homebrew". Because yeasts are finicky things that aren't done until they're done.

And just to put it out there, I won't be serving five day old beer next weekend.
 
Quick update, and a thank you to ChshreCat. Your post made me think – if you've brewed award winning beers in an ale pail, there's no reason mine should have staled in one over the course of 24 hours.

Luckily I knew better than to trash the first batch. I racked it into the secondary and threw it in the fridge to age while I figure all of this out. After reading ChreCat's post, I went to the fridge and tried the first batch again. The flavor that I had earlier attributed to cardboard was gone, replaced instead by the fruity, slightly sulfurous flavor of a traditional English Ale.

The lesson here, is to "Relax, don't worry, and have a homebrew". Because yeasts are finicky things that aren't done until they're done.

And just to put it out there, I won't be serving five day old beer next weekend.


I had the same issue a few yerars ago with an prdinary bitter that I brewed. I was in a rush, instead of my nowmal 3-4 weeks in the Primary, I only let it sit in the Primary until Primary Fermentation was done. And that was my issue. I was used to beers in which I have let the Yeasties to there job of cleaning up some of the Off Flavors in my beer. This time though, seeing as I racked it off the yeast bed early, I what I had was green beer. It tasted oxidized to me, but it wasn't. It was young. No worries though. I let it sit in my keg for 3 weeks, and V'oila!!! A great tasting Camper's Delight.
 
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