Anyone try Austin's Winter Warmer w/Muntons?

Just ordered the AG Winter Warmer from Austin Home Brew, looks delicious. Since it has a high gravity (1.073) Austin suggests double pitching, which I am going to do.

However, I'm a little nervous about this high gravity because I am going to use the suggested dry yeast Munton's Premium Gold Yeast and not to doubt Austin, but I have heard bad things about Muntons. Perhaps their premium yeast is better?

I used Muntons premium yeast once with a low gravity beer and I was happy with the results. You might want to check the pitch rate though using this:

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

It says to pitch 2.9 packets of 5 gram yeast packets based on 1.073 gravity. If i remember correctly, I think the Muntons are 6 grams.

Let us know how it turns out!

I made this and used safale us-05. Double pitched and it came out just fine.

It is not Muntons in general as a company. Regular Muntons yeast has been reported to be sluggish. We never received any complaints but we switched all of the recipes we had with Muntons, we switched to the premium yeast. The premium yeast has always gotten rave reviews by homebrewers. No guilt by association.

Forrest

Austinhomebrew said:

It is not Muntons in general as a company. Regular Muntons yeast has been reported to be sluggish. We never received any complaints but we switched all of the recipes we had with Muntons, we switched to the premium yeast. The premium yeast has always gotten rave reviews by homebrewers. No guilt by association.

Forrest

Click to expand...

OK, good to know.... I'll let you know how it turns out. Right now I'm drinking an all grain ESB I bought from you guys awhile back. Its fantastic.

Just put 5 gallons of AHS Winter Warmer - Extract w/ Muntons Premium Gold yeast into bottle and below is my report for your review.

Brewed on 11-25-09. Overall brew day went well. Staring gravity was 1.074, receipe states 1.073. I used 10 lb. of Extra Pale Extract. Nothing more really to say about brew day.

At time of pitching yeast I had aerated using a "paint mixer" attached to drill. I have used this method for every brew and I have had great success. I did do the recommend "double pitch" per Austin Homebrew.

Placed fermenter in my basement area. Temps started at 67 F. then winter came and basebent went down to 64 F. Fermentation was very active first 4 days then slowed gradually after that. Fermentation basically stoped after seven days (no activity in air lock). I did not do any gravity readings untill 12-21-09. I had 26 days of fermentation.

About every seven days I would give the Carboy a shake just to see if that would wake up any yeast. Overall I do not know if the helped or not.

At time of botteling I checked FG and it was at 1.026. Receipe calls for 1.019. I could have left the fermentation go longer by racking to secondary put this was the only time I had to bottle. I guess I should have let the beer go to secondary and hope the FG would come down a bit.

So, not sure if the Muntons Premium Gold did not attenuate well or were there other factors that caused the FG not to hit the 1.026 mark.

Next time I would like to try Safale US-04 yeast. When I have use US-04 I do hit my FG, but, US-04 might not go well with the Winter Warmer brew.

Look like everything went perfectly. It is an ale so fermenting down to 64 degrees would have slowed the fermentation down or stopped it early.

There is only so much sugar for the yeast to eat. It is very very easy to predict the original gravity. It is close to impossible for us to predict the final gravity for a specific beer. Especially if there are 3 different yeast options there will be 3 different final gravities.


We make an educated average guess on the final gravity of all of our recipes.
The recipe sheet may not be accurate for the final gravity for Muntons Dry yeast.
The original gravity is based on the amount of sugars and has nothing to do with the yeast. The final gravity has everything to do with the yeast. And since it is a living thing no one can accurately predict the final gravity. On top of that the number we provide is only a guideline. The 1.026 you reach is accurate because that is what you reached.

I am going to change the recipe sheet for that recipe to 1.025 for the final because that is closer to what it should be according to your results. Thanks for your help.

You could make another batch doing the same exact thing with another Muntons Premium yeast and get different results. I would contend that if you had made the same batch under the same conditions with S-04 you would get virtually the same results.

There is nothing wrong with the yeast you used. I think you would have lowered your FG by a couple points if you would have fermented around 70 degrees. No matter which yeast you used. If you do the next batch of the same beer with the S-04 at a warmer temperature and it finishes a little drier, it is not Muntons or S-04 fault, it is the temperature.

I hope this helps.

Forrest

The standard Muntons yeast was selected to work well with their can + sugar kits. With half the fermentables being cane sugar, they didn't want high attenuation on the malt. So if it is used with an all-malt recipe, the FG is high. The Gold is a more standard ale yeast adapted to all-malt brewing.

Forrest:

Thanks for your commentary about my results. Being new to the world of homebrewing I look at the receipe sheets that come with kits as rules to follow. I think, as I have used your kits and others, I am finding they are at best a guidline and not to be held accountable if the OG and FG do not hit the stated values.

Looking back at the twelve brews that I have done this year, eight did hit the stated OG, two hit stated FG.

My lesson learned here is that attenuation is subjective.

My goal going into 2010 is to talk with local club members to better learn, understand attenuation and learn factors that will help me improve attenuation.

As a suggestion to your brewing sheets. Could you show a range for OG and FG. That way if I did not hit the stated OG or FG I am not going to the Homebrewtalk.com and asking the population what the heck I did wrong?

Once again Forrest, thanks for your feedback.

You can easily figure out OG on any recipe to see if the sheet is accurate.

Extract is 35 points per pound per gallon.
Base Grains are 28 points per pound per gallon.
Specialty Grains are 20 points per pound per gallon.

So for example:
1 1/2 lb of specialty grain x 20 = 30 points
1 lb of base grain x 28 = 28 points
7 lb of Extract x 35 = 245 points
Total = 313 points
303 divided by 5 for a 5 gallon batch = 60.6 or 1.0606

The final gravity depends on the yeast, time, temperature, procedure, etc.


Forrest