A Lesson in Impatience

Looking for a quick turnaround (missed a couple weeks of brewing and had a tap open) I decided to brew BM's Centennial Blonde after reading rave reviews. He had mentioned that it's quite possible to go Grain to Glass in two weeks (one week primary, one week force carb).

I had a great brew day (grain), hit all my numbers, fermented out to 1.008 after 8 days in the primary, so I threw it in a keg and carbed it up (2 weeks @ 11psi).

I can tell that the beer has a great underlying taste, but I'm getting an overpowering yeast flavor that's really putting me off the brew. Never had this happen before and wondering if someone could help to explain... is the taste from the beer being too young, or is it from suspended yeast? I thought the 2 weeks @ 39ºF or so would knock all the buggers down.

Thanks for your input.

Maybe your "cold crash" while carbing did knock all the yeast down...right into your dip tube. How many glasses have you pulled? You might just need to get past the chunk of yeast.

Next time try cold crashing the fermenter instead of the serving vessel to avoid this.

Probably 4 - 6... that's what I was thinking but I figured it would have cleared by now. Maybe not?

Rhoman said:

Probably 4 - 6... that's what I was thinking but I figured it would have cleared by now. Maybe not?

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4-6 pints should be pretty clear, unless you got a real ton of yeast in there. I usually only have about a pint of yeast straight from a cold crashed corny fermenter. You could try doing another racking, especially if you have a jumper for going keg to keg without losing your carb.

I still think this problem will solve itself however, but next time try to minimize the yeast BEFORE you get it in the serving keg.

What yeast did you use?

Nottingham - actually my first time using dry yeast too. Sprinkled into the fermenter. I have stirplate and flasks on hand from previous experiments, but I was under the impression that sprinkling was fine for a 5gal batch.

The beer pours crystal clear, which is why the taste concerns me a little bit more... if it was cloudy I would just assume that the yeast hadn't settled out.

This is my go to beer and I brew it every other weekend.

I usually leave mine in the carboy until the yeast drops out on its own and I can basically see through it. I naturally carb mine in a corny though so they get to sit for a few weeks after theyve been racked into the keg. Usually I have some chill haze but the flavor has never been off by just letting it sit.

Rhoman said:

Nottingham - actually my first time using dry yeast too. Sprinkled into the fermenter. I have stirplate and flasks on hand from previous experiments, but I was under the impression that sprinkling was fine for a 5gal batch.

The beer pours crystal clear, which is why the taste concerns me a little bit more... if it was cloudy I would just assume that the yeast hadn't settled out.

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My hypothesis was off then. Yeasty flavor usually indicates stressed yeast, but your sprinkling of a 11.5g packet of dry yeast should have been sufficient for this light of a beer.

Just wanted to note that I was wrong, and while the flavor might be able to be aged out, it won't go away on it's own quickly like I thought. Nothing comes to mind at the moment, but I will chime in again if I think of something.