Lost 1 gallon of Stout to trub?

Hey, folks! I'm on my second batch of homebrew now. First was a pumpkin ale that turned out spectacular. This one is a double chocolate oatmeal stout. Here's the recipe I used.

7# liquid pale extract
1# roasted barley
1# medium crystal malt (60L)
1/2# chocolate malt
1/2# black patent malt
1 pound quick oats
1/4# coffee ground coarse
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa (added at end of boil)
1 oz GR Tradition (bittering)
1/2 Willamette (at 10 mins)
Irish Ale Yeast (I used White Labs)

OG was 1.063. I pitched right from the White Labs vial and 12 hours later I had such crazy activity that there airlock was a STREAM of air, not even individual bubbles. After 72 hours it had subsided to 1 bubble per minute, so I sampled the gravity and it was 1.023. I racked to a secondary, but ended up with only 4 gallons (from an original 5.5 gallons of liquid).

The trub on the bottom was 4 inches thick...WAY thicker than for my pumpkin ale. I'm assuming this is because of the oatmeal starches, but this is an uneducated guess.

The beer already tastes delicious, with a distinct coffee aftertaste and a creamy mouth feel.

But I'm worried that I've only got 4 gallons of beer in a 5 gallon carboy.

Is it normal to lose this much beer to trub?

Should I top up with a gallon of sterilized marbles? Or will it be okay with this much head space? Or can I top up with something else?

Thanks!

The head space wont be an issue, i would not top it off.

I'm just taking a shot in the dark here, but you might have lost beer from racking after only 3 days. If you'd given it a week or two then the trub may have settled out to a thinner, more compact layer allowing you to rack more beer off it.

ChshreCat said:

you might have lost beer from racking after only 3 days. If you'd given it a week or two then the trub may have settled out to a thinner, more compact layer allowing you to rack more beer off it.

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Oh! That's interesting. Anyone else affirm?

I also racked my pumpkin ale to the secondary after 72 hours because it had a rapid start and completed quickly. I know there's no harm in leaving it on the trub for a few weeks, but is there a benefit? I was eager to get it into the carboy to condition. It turned out stellar. All my beer snob friends say it's the best pumpkin ale they've ever tried.

Dernit...

um, yeah...3 days is too quick to be doing anything with the beer. I personally do 14 days minimum in primary, and typically only use a secondary if I'm dry hopping, bulk aging, etc. This time will not only allow the yeast to completely finish their job and clean up after themselves, but will allow all sediments to drop.

Don't the yeast continue to work in the secondary? I though that was where most of the "cleaning" process took place. And sediments continue to fall out.

What is it about staying on the trub that benefits the fermentation process? I thought that the same processes take place in the secondary that are happening in the primary once the bulk of the sugars have been converted and the yeast go about their other "secondary" jobs.

Sorry for the questions...I've read Palmer forwards and backwards but sometimes he gets a little too advanced for me. But it seemed to me that he says the only real purpose for a secondary is to allow the beer to continue the "finer" points of its fermentation away from the trub, which contains those waxy, soapy compounds that the yeast will eventually get around to once they've finished cleaning up after themselves.

So many people just ferment in the primary for a week or two and then bottle, but some rack to a secondary. Since I'm doing big ales that take a long time to clarify and condition (like this stout, which will condition for a month before kegging), I chose to use a secondary. But I definitely want to stop racking to the secondary so quickly if I'm actually harming my beer in doing so. It just seemed, from Palmer's discourse, that there wasn't a benefit to keeping the beer on the trub after the yeast's true PRIMARY job (conversion of sugar to CO2 and alcohol) was finished and the target final gravity was reached.

From Palmer's site: "As the primary phase winds down, a majority of the yeast start settling out and the krausen starts to subside. If you are going to transfer the beer off of the trub and primary yeast cake, this is the proper time to do so." My krausen was totally gone when I did the transfer and I was at my target FG. He also says, "Racking from the primary may be done at any time after primary fermentation has more-or-less completed."

Please, please correct me if I'm doing something wrong, though!

benthegrate said:

Hey, folks! I'm on my second batch of homebrew now. First was a pumpkin ale that turned out spectacular. This one is a double chocolate oatmeal stout. Here's the recipe I used.

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I would love to see the Full recipe and steps for that batch, its sounds so delicious

Both beers have turned out fabulous, and even some microbrew snob acquaintances of mine don't believe I actually made them, they're so good. Here are the recipes:

SPICED PUMPKIN ALE

5-6 pounds pumpkin flesh (see note)
1# Vienna malt
1/2# Crystal malt 40L
1/2# malted wheat
1/2# carapils
1/2# flaked barley
3 pounds amber malt extract liquid
4 pounds pale malt extract liquid
(or use 6 pounds pale dry extract)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 oz Mt. Hood hops (bittering)
1/2 oz Cascade hops (15 mins)
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons cardamom
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Wyeast 1056 American Ale

**NOTE. To prepare pumpkin flesh, cut a pumpkin in half, remove seeds and strings, place cut side down in a rimmed baking pan, and add 1/2" of water to the pan. Bake in a 350F oven for 1-2 hours until pumpkin easily gives when pressed with a spoon. Let cool completely, then scoop flesh from peel. I bake and freeze several pumpkins in fall when they are available, so I have flesh to make this beer year-round. Canned pumpkin will produce a lot of trub and lose you a lot of beer.

Steep pumpkin and grains for 1 hour between 150F-170F. Remove gently with a wire strainer, being careful not to oxygenate. Add malt extract, brown sugar, molasses, and Mt. Hood hops and boil for 60 minutes. Add finishing hops at 15 minutes. At 5 minutes, add spices (I toast mine for 30 seconds in a hot pan first to unlock the flavors) and vanilla. Cool to 80F, strain to remove any bits of pumpkin, aerate, and pitch yeast.

After 1 week, rack to secondary to condition for 1-2 weeks. Prime and bottle.

OG - Generally around 1.076
FG - 1.017

.......

Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

1# roasted barley
1# quick oats, toasted in oven at 300F for 30 mins
1# Crystal malt 40L
1/2# chocolate malt
1/2# black patent malt
1/2# flaked barley
1/2# carapils
1/4# coffee, coarse ground (or less, this amt will give definite coffee flavor)
7 pounds liquid pale extract
1 oz GR Tradition (bittering)
1/2 oz Willamette (15 mins)
3/4 cup cocoa powder (added at end of boil)
1 cup maltodextrin (added at end of boil)
Irish Ale Yeast

Steep grains in bag for 1 hour at 150F-170F. Remove bag, squeeze out excess liquid. Add malt extract and bittering hops and boil 1 hour. Add finishing hops at 15 mins. At end of boil, add cocoa powder and maltodextrin. Cool to 80F, aerate, pitch yeast. After 1 week in primary, rack to secondary for 3-4 weeks. Prime (and backsweeten if desired) and bottle condition for 3-4 weeks. Best served at room temperature.

benthegrate said:

Oh! That's interesting. Anyone else affirm?

I also racked my pumpkin ale to the secondary after 72 hours because it had a rapid start and completed quickly. I know there's no harm in leaving it on the trub for a few weeks, but is there a benefit? I was eager to get it into the carboy to condition. It turned out stellar. All my beer snob friends say it's the best pumpkin ale they've ever tried.

Dernit...

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No doubt correct. That trub would no doubt have compacted to less than a half gallon with a week or two.

72 hours is ok sorta, if you are really, really impatient, to rack a simple low gravity light grain beer but that stout probably should have sat on the yeast for a minimum of 17 days.

And yes there is a major benefit to leaving it on the cake.

The bubbling CO2 through the airlock phase of fermentation is only the first half (actually first 1/4). The secondary stage of fermenting is where the flavors refine and the yeasties clean up after themselves.

I'm surprised that Pumpkin was drinkable. I'm sure it was delicious but I'm surprised you didn't need a spoon to eat it.

I wouldn't worry too much about it but yu might want to experiment with patience and see what a little more time in the fermenter might do for your beers.

benthegrate said:

Don't the yeast continue to work in the secondary? I though that was where most of the "cleaning" process took place. And sediments continue to fall out.

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EDIT: I thought Palmer was actually pretty good about differentiating between Secondary Fermenting and Secondary Fermentation. I found Papazian to be less so. When I read Papazian the first time I was left with the exact impressions that you have and when I look at my brew logs from 1992 I was regularly doing 4 and 5 day primaries and then secondary. He actually made me feel like the sooner off the yeast cake the better.

You are confusing secondary fermentation with secondary fermenter. Very easy to do.

Secondary fermentation occurs while the yeast is still in solution immediately after the conversion of sugars to alcohol. During that time there is tons of proteins and partially digested sugars in solution in addition to the waste products of the yeast, plus any esters and fusel they create while they ferment. During secondary fermentation the yeast will clean up these esters, and the fusels, and reabsorb a lot of their waste products.

Once this process is complete if you choose THEN you can rack to the Secondary Fermenter. This is a also called a bright tank or clearing tank and it is where the sedimentation occurs. This is where the most of the proteins and other detritus fall out of solution and the beer clears. Yes, the yeast is still present in this tank but because the vast majority has been left behind in the primary tank any benefit from the yeast at this stage is greatly diminished.

I lost a similiar amount with my last batch.

I was hoping the trub would compact down to less. There was at least 8" on the bottom of the carboy. I gave it a full 11 days before racking.

I do have to say, I crushed my own grains this time. I forgot to add that as an option when I bought them online.

grains are as follows

1# organic us malt crystal 60L
.5# German crafa II malt
.5# UK chocolate malt
.5# UK carastan
.5 French kiln coffee malt
1# flaked oats.



The beer looks pretty tasty. Unfortunantly I only have about 4 gallons.

Are you guys straining or otherwise separating the cold break before it goes in the fermenter? Because if not, I usually start with 6 gallons of wort in the kettle, then lose 1/2 to trub that gets left behind when it goes into primary and then I lose another 1/2 G when I go to secondary.

So maybe we are all losing a gallon but you are not planning for it with your batch size.

>And yes there is a major benefit to leaving it on the cake.

I still didn't get an explanation of that, though. Whether the beer is pulled off the cake into a secondary or not, the yeast is in suspension. The trub in the primary is composed primarily of waste from the fermentation process, solids from the boil that have settled, and inactive yeast which will not reactivate unless provided with a new food source and oxygen. Yeast reach a critical mass when consuming sugars, and once the sugars begin to disappear and the alcohol level begins to rise, the frenzy dies down, most become inactive and sink to the bottom, and have nothing else to contribute to fermentation unless a primary fermentation begins again.

The yeast still in suspension are the yeasts which perform the secondary cleaning process. Those yeasts do not die or lessen in numbers when racked to the secondary.

The beer continues to do the exact same thing in the secondary that it would have if it was on the cake. Nothing from the ACTUAL CAKE benefits the beer during secondary fermentation, right? THAT'S what I'm looking for.

The beer doesn't STOP secondary fermentation when I pull it off the cake and into the secondary. And I'm leaving it in the secondary for anywhere from 2-4 weeks BEFORE priming and bottle conditioning for another month. I'm not rushing anything...I'm just getting it off the trub.

>I'm surprised that Pumpkin was drinkable. I'm sure it was delicious but I'm surprised you didn't need a spoon to eat it.

I don't make my pumpkin ale with canned pumpkin, I make it with chunks of roasted pumpkin. My pumpkin ale comes out crystal clear. (And I get 3 times as much trub with my stout as I do with my pumpkin ale...I've made the stout 3 times now and the pumpkin ale 8 times, very similar results each time.) I'm not sure I'm communicating properly, because people seem to think I'm pulling the beer and drinking it after 72 hours.

I'm following Palmer's advice, removing the beer from the trub after airlock activity ceases and I've reached FG (which is anywhere from 3-7 days at air-conditioned summer temps in Texas with a healthy yeast starter and yeast energizer) and letting it sit in a secondary for 2-4 weeks before priming.

And the question I have is...what is it about the trub that BENEFITS the beer, why I should be leaving it on the trub for longer before racking to a secondary? Most of you guys are priming and bottling after a few weeks in the primary. I'm essentially doing the same thing, just using a secondary that apparently most people don't use.

Is it normal to lose this much beer to trub?

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No, if you had waited two weeks to rack, the trub would have settled to about 1/4 the amount.

dontman said:

Are you guys straining or otherwise separating the cold break before it goes in the fermenter? Because if not, I usually start with 6 gallons of wort in the kettle, then lose 1/2 to trub that gets left behind when it goes into primary and then I lose another 1/2 G when I go to secondary.

So maybe we are all losing a gallon but you are not planning for it with your batch size.

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So your saying adjust the recipe to a six gallon size batch. Will this work even if you are doing only a partial boil.

benthegrate said:

Whether the beer is pulled off the cake into a secondary or not, the yeast is in suspension. The trub in the primary is composed primarily of waste from the fermentation process, solids from the boil that have settled, and inactive yeast which will not reactivate unless provided with a new food source and oxygen.

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Some yeast is in suspension but you can hardly say THE yeast is still in suspension. No the trub is not composed primarily of waste. It is composed primarily of yeast that has flocculated. It is still active but it is active at the bottom of the fermenter. Hence the term secondary fermentation.

You are absolutely correct in saying that the same exact clean up process occurs while in a secondary fermenter. It just happens in a much smaller (read slower) way because there is only a fraction of the yeast available in the secondary container.

Like I said before there is nothing wrong with the way you have been doing it. It was generally held practice for a long time.