Adam P
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- Joined
- May 16, 2018
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Hey all, first time caller here!
I've been brewing all-grain for about six months now, and have just gotten into some yeast harvesting, stirring up starters, etc. I brought back a case of Hill Farmstead from VT last year, so I decided to try my hand at propagating up some of those dregs. I got a couple ml of dregs out of a bottle of Anna, put that through a couple 100ml 1.020 starters on the stir plate for 3-4 days each, then did a false 8-to-1 propagation up to four times the volume but double the gravity, a 1.040.
The starter went nuts for like 7 days, massive kraüsen (photos attached), lots of great color and clear exponential growth happening. Eventually I needed to plan for brew day, so I cold crashed it in the fridge for about 4 days before I saw any real flocculation happening. I had just enough clear starter beer to decant about half of the starter, then pitched that into 6gal of 1.052 grisette (I overshot my efficiency and got .004 extra gravity points). About 250ml cells was my goal, and I think that was probably close enough.
The beer took about 2 days to get bubbling through the blow-off on my SS brew bucket, and peaked at a little less than a second each bubble. It stayed at about 1/sec for a week, and has slowly dropped down to about 1 every ten seconds as of yesterday, day 19 of fermentation. I figured that was a good point to check for gravity, and found it at 1.006, overshooting my planned 85% attenuation and instead hitting 88.5%. I wanted to wait to dry hop till after ferm so I wouldn't potentially disrupt bacteria balance as I don't know what's in this thing, so I did that last night, then purged the chamber, and it hasn't bubbled since.
The sample is funk-tastic, a little cheesy, tart, grassy. Tastes more mellow than that, but definitely needs aging and I think the dry hop addition will help.
So, after the long-winded exposition, the question: If I have to bottle this (no kegs I'm sorry to say), what should my next step be? Clearly there is Brett in there, but I also know from forums that Shaun may bottle with some wine yeast, and who knows what bacteria might have survived that. Do I need to re-yeast or can I just prime to maybe 2vols and hope there is still another couple gravity points to go in the beer itself? Do I need to use big heavy bottles, or can I use my current set-up, 22oz bottles with a capper? Or should I transfer to purged secondary and let it sit for a while?
Thanks!
I've been brewing all-grain for about six months now, and have just gotten into some yeast harvesting, stirring up starters, etc. I brought back a case of Hill Farmstead from VT last year, so I decided to try my hand at propagating up some of those dregs. I got a couple ml of dregs out of a bottle of Anna, put that through a couple 100ml 1.020 starters on the stir plate for 3-4 days each, then did a false 8-to-1 propagation up to four times the volume but double the gravity, a 1.040.
The starter went nuts for like 7 days, massive kraüsen (photos attached), lots of great color and clear exponential growth happening. Eventually I needed to plan for brew day, so I cold crashed it in the fridge for about 4 days before I saw any real flocculation happening. I had just enough clear starter beer to decant about half of the starter, then pitched that into 6gal of 1.052 grisette (I overshot my efficiency and got .004 extra gravity points). About 250ml cells was my goal, and I think that was probably close enough.
The beer took about 2 days to get bubbling through the blow-off on my SS brew bucket, and peaked at a little less than a second each bubble. It stayed at about 1/sec for a week, and has slowly dropped down to about 1 every ten seconds as of yesterday, day 19 of fermentation. I figured that was a good point to check for gravity, and found it at 1.006, overshooting my planned 85% attenuation and instead hitting 88.5%. I wanted to wait to dry hop till after ferm so I wouldn't potentially disrupt bacteria balance as I don't know what's in this thing, so I did that last night, then purged the chamber, and it hasn't bubbled since.
The sample is funk-tastic, a little cheesy, tart, grassy. Tastes more mellow than that, but definitely needs aging and I think the dry hop addition will help.
So, after the long-winded exposition, the question: If I have to bottle this (no kegs I'm sorry to say), what should my next step be? Clearly there is Brett in there, but I also know from forums that Shaun may bottle with some wine yeast, and who knows what bacteria might have survived that. Do I need to re-yeast or can I just prime to maybe 2vols and hope there is still another couple gravity points to go in the beer itself? Do I need to use big heavy bottles, or can I use my current set-up, 22oz bottles with a capper? Or should I transfer to purged secondary and let it sit for a while?
Thanks!
