overpitched?

My dry stout is behaving strangely. I racked the wort straight onto the yeast cake from an ordinary bitter that I bottled off the same day. It exploded into activity within a couple hours and by nightfall was bubbling so fast I couldn't even count the bubbles.

That was two days ago; today, when I went to check on it, it's bubbling less than once per minute and looks like it's done. I slurped up a hydrometer sample with the turkey baster and got 1.020 (down from 1.054 or so) -- there's two pounds of barley flakes in there, so I suppose it's not impossible; I'm using WLP002 -- but it definitely tasted sharp and I'm wondering if this isn't the "green apples" taste people talk about getting from acetyldehyde (sp?).

I swirled it around to try and get the yeast back up in the brew. But it's still just kind of sitting there. Is it possible that I pitched too much yeast, and during that wild, screaming orgy of fermentation it threw off more acetyldehyde than it can now clean up?

Gulp ... IS MY BEER RUINED? (Just kidding!)

Slán!

--Finn

Your brew is very young. Don't judge it yet and let it sit for a week or two. Keep in sealed and clean and I would venture a guess that it is not ruined.

Plan the next brew to take your mind off this batch.

Acetyldehyde is a by product of fermentation. The yeast will metabolise it after a few days. Don't rack off the yeast yet. Let it sit on the yeast for at least a week and everything will be fine.

i pitch very big and always have wild orgies like you describe. i'm often at FG by 72 hours, but i always leave my beer on the yeast for 7-10 days so it can munch all the nasty stuff like diactyl and acetyldehyde, etc.

SenorWanderer said:

i pitch very big and always have wild orgies like you describe. i'm often at FG by 72 hours, but i always leave my beer on the yeast for 7-10 days so it can munch all the nasty stuff like diactyl and acetyldehyde, etc.

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Cool, that's what I planned to do ... I've never pitched a big starter like this, and wasn't quite sure what to expect.

Don't so much mind the diacetyl, a little butter might be good in this, but I'm definitely keen to get the green apples et.

Thanks!

--Finn

p.s. The next batch is already truckin'! A Scottish this time. Tryin' to keep it Gaelic...

Lol... give it a break... you can't expect something to be drinkable after three days. I'd wait at least two weeks before even touching it.

Did you overpitch - yes
Is your beer ruined - no

Overpitching an English style beer will interfere with the ester profile of your yeast which is a desirable characteristic in those beers. The yeast need to reproduce in order to produce those esters and if you overpitched they won't. Go to http://www.mrmalty.com/ to calculate how much yeast cake slurry to pitch.

GT

Not to go too far off topic but I know after I racked my last beer to secondary as I was cleaning the carboy of the yeast cake and krausen ring I smelled and tasted a small bit of the yeast cake and it contained a large amount of break and some hop fibers that weren't filtered out when I added to the primary.

I'm brewing an amber ale this weekend and using WLP-001 again and I would love to try using the cake but I'm worried about the quality of yeast left in the cake and whether or not the last batch of break material is going to contribute to off flavors. Really, brewing for me isn't a cost thing but saving on liquid yeast would be nice.

Got Trub? said:

Did you overpitch - yes
Is your beer ruined - no

Overpitching an English style beer will interfere with the ester profile of your yeast which is a desirable characteristic in those beers. The yeast need to reproduce in order to produce those esters and if you overpitched they won't. Go to http://www.mrmalty.com/ to calculate how much yeast cake slurry to pitch.

GT

Click to expand...

Good to know! Actually that's great, because we had a sudden blast of warm weather and this stout fermented at about 68 to 70 degrees instead of the 64 it was supposed to get. So maybe the esters it didn't get a chance to produce will balance out the esters from the warm fermentation ... I'll check MrMalty's calculator out, thanks for pointing me to it.

Oh, and guys ...

"Is My Beer Ruined" was a JOKE!

Cheers!

--Finn