Thanks for the information all. It's interesting, and runs contrary to what I always believed and practiced.
Well that's cause the info you use evolved from the oldschool ideas that came from a time when brewers were scared of their yeast. They believed that prolonged yeast contact was a bad thing- it contributed to things like the big homebrew Bogeyman, autolysis.
I still believe that POSSIBLY autolysis WAS a concern to homebrewers 20-30 years ago, when the yeast came in dry cakes, of dubious heritage and came across from where homebrewing was legalized in the hot cargo holds of ships and may have sat for months in terrible conditioned...In other words was unhealthy to begin with.
And therefore may have crapped out and made for nastiness, (and also was prone to stick fermentation as well.) and tales of it just continued to perpetuate over time, even though yeasts are much more healthy and fresh, and more is understood about them nowaday....people gravitate to the negative and fear and still perpetuate those worries...over and over and over....
And I still maintain that as much as I like Palmer, he contributed to the hysteria.....I mean noone but me seems to notice that that section on the scary autolysis appears in the chapter on
lagering. He is not talking about it with ales...or beers in general..just lagers..because flaws are more perceptable in lagers...since in essence most commercial lagers are tasteless...anything would stand out..
and I think most new brewers have crapped themselves at the mere thought long before the notice the closer to the section either.
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.
There's been a big shift in brewing consciousness in the last few years where many of us believe that yeast is a good thing, and besides just fermenting the beer, that they are fastidious creatures who go back and clean up any by products created by themselves during fermentation, which may lead to off flavors.
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.
Leaving the yeast alone, and letting the krausen fall through will act like a filter as it sinks, pulling down any proteins and other off flavor causes.
That's why also many of us leave out beers on the yeast cake for 3-4 weeks, and skip secondaries. To let the yeast do their thing.
And like I said above..people get so frightened of autolysis that they don't even notice that elsewhere in the book in several places, he says it's
beneficial to leave the beer on the yeast for a couple weeks post fermentation.
One thing to remember is that Papazian, as wonderful as it is, was written 30 years ago...and a lot of "science" or "common wisdom" that he as an author tapped into has evolved....all authors face this issue with their work.
Charlie Papazian said it But he might not necessarily say it now....see the difference?
His basic info is timeless....how to brew beer, figure out recipes, etc...but some of the info is just a reflection of the "opinions," or prevailing wisdom of the times, and may not even reflect his current beliefs...There's a podcast with Papazian from a year or so ago, where he talks about just having started using rice hulls in his mash ton...so if he doesn't update the book again, or write a new one, unless you've heard the podcast or read it on here, you won't KNOW about it.
.A book is a snapshot of the author's body of knowlege and the "common wisdom" at the time the author wrote the book, which may mean 3 years before it was even published. Papazian's book is 30+ years old. The basic knowlege is good, but brewing science and experience has progressed to where some things an author believes or says at that time may no-longer be valid...even to the author.
Most of the time when someone "revises" a book they don't necessarilly "re-write" the entire thing...and unless they annotated the changes, often all a "revised" edition has to make it up to date is a new introduction, and maybe the addition or removal of some things. But Rarely is a revision in a book a serious comb through of the entire book.
So it's not really conflicting, like so much of brewing you will find people believing and practicing things they read in books, while others are brewing based on information that is more current. This is an ever evolving hobby, and information and ideas change. And now with places like this with a huuge amount of dedicated and serious brewers, as well as all the podcasts online, you will find the most state of the art brewing info.
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, 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.
