I might have overpitched.... VIDEO Attached

[lastsecondapex]

I made a 5gal starter of Wyeast London Ale III for my 50gal Oatmeal Coffee Stout and after 12 hours from pitching, it clogged my blowoff and looked like it might explode.

I made an emergency airlock out of a 64oz Gatorade bottle and a 16oz water bottle, but any ideas on how to keep down the mess?

[ame]http://youtu.be/fbhsNNqJqYo[/ame]

 

[Yooper]

I can't see the video, but it's very difficult to overpitch a batch unless you purposely tried.

One thing to keep an eye on is fermentation temperature. I've noticed that fermentation itself produces heat, and if the wort was pretty warm when the yeast it pitched, the fermentation gets hotter. As it gets hotter, the yeast go crazy and the fermentation gets even more violent. And of course, that makes it even warmer inside the fermenter.

Just make sure the fermentation temperature is below 73 degrees or so (lower is better) and then put the airlock back on when fermentation slows.

 

[lastsecondapex]

I can't see the video, but it's very difficult to overpitch a batch unless you purposely tried.

One thing to keep an eye on is fermentation temperature. I've noticed that fermentation itself produces heat, and if the wort was pretty warm when the yeast it pitched, the fermentation gets hotter. As it gets hotter, the yeast go crazy and the fermentation gets even more violent. And of course, that makes it even warmer inside the fermenter.

Just make sure the fermentation temperature is below 73 degrees or so (lower is better) and then put the airlock back on when fermentation slows.

Good advice, though I pitched at 74* and have no way to tightly regulate the 60gal barrel it's in. I will wrap it with a wet towel though to see if that helps.


Thanks

 

[Yooper]

Good advice, though I pitched at 74* and have no way to tightly regulate the 60gal barrel it's in. I will wrap it with a wet towel though to see if that helps.


Thanks

That could be a big part of it. I'd try to cool the wort to 62 before pitching, normally, in a small batch. I bet in a big batch like that it got HOT in there!

 

[jfr1111]

Good advice, though I pitched at 74* and have no way to tightly regulate the 60gal barrel it's in. I will wrap it with a wet towel though to see if that helps.


Thanks

Wet towel with a fan pointed at it is better than nothing. Can't you get a walk-in freezer to ferment in

 

[lastsecondapex]

Wet towel with a fan pointed at it is better than nothing. Can't you get a walk-in freezer to ferment in

Maybe come tax return time... lol

 

[Denny]

Wow, pitching at 74 is not a good idea. In a batch that size fermentation could add another 10F. You might be in for heavy esters and fusels.

 

[lastsecondapex]

I use ground water with my counterflow chiller, so 74* is about as low as I can go in the summer. I did leave the garage open until late last night, so the wort was probably down into the 60's by midnight, but I used the highest temperature tolerant English strain that I could get from the LHBS...

 

[Yooper]

I use ground water with my counterflow chiller, so 74* is about as low as I can go in the summer. I did leave the garage open until late last night, so the wort was probably down into the 60's by midnight, but I used the highest temperature tolerant English strain that I could get from the LHBS...

Well, let us know how it finishes. That's a big batch of beer- you must have lots of friends!

 

[lastsecondapex]

Well, let us know how it finishes. That's a big batch of beer- you must have lots of friends!

Thanks, and thank you for all your good advice here- wish you could see the video, it's unlike anything I've seen before.

 

[lastsecondapex]

Well, it was great until last Sunday. Fermentation ended at 1.017 and we placed the coffee on it for 72 hours. I pulled the coffee off on Wednesday and all was looking great. We were ready to keg it tonight.

We opened up the fermenter to find the beginning of a pellicle and a strong tart scent. The flavor was amazing as far as coffee stouts go, but 45 gallons of stout is too much to drink before infection and off-flavors hit.

After groaning for a while this evening, I transferred it into an old Jim Beam barrel that I soured up with Brett L and Lacto. bacterias this past year and surprisingly it's still completely water-tight after 2 months empty.

What's worse is that we went to transfer a 10% ABV All-Munich base Imperial Stout and it was massively infected as well. -I wound up topping off the JB barrel with some and I guess I'll have a local distillery distill the remaining 25 gallons sometime soon.

Hopefully oatmeal-coffee-sour imperial stouts are good- I have a bunch of it...

 

[stephelton]

Hopefully oatmeal-coffee-sour imperial stouts are good- I have a bunch of it...

I'm sorry to laugh, but that just sounds really funny.

I had a string of infected beers last year. I was using 15 gallon plastic drums -- similar to what you appear to be using. I've got two left which I still use that I know have no bugs in them, but the others I've pretty much decided to toss / use for other things. Since then, I've been trying to keep good records about what equipment (especially fermenters) I use for each batch of beer so that when I do have infections I can narrow down where the problem is.

Distilling sounds like a pretty interesting "solution," have you tried that before?

 

[stephelton]

I use ground water with my counterflow chiller, so 74* is about as low as I can go in the summer. I did leave the garage open until late last night, so the wort was probably down into the 60's by midnight, but I used the highest temperature tolerant English strain that I could get from the LHBS...

I think you might be surprised at how much a body of liquid will maintain its heat. Recently I left 15 gallons of water, freshly boiled, to sit overnight (it was probably a low of 40F that night) and found that it had only cooled to a little over 180 by the morning. That's with a lot less volume than you, and a much larger temperature difference (180 - 40 vs. 74 - ??)

 

[SpeedYellow]

So you're still developing your brewing skills but having problems with (a) fermentation temps, (b) sanitation, and (c) yeast pitching rates, yet you're brewing 50 (!) gallon batches. Your guts are admirable, but whooo-doggy you may want to take a few steps back. :cross:

 

[lastsecondapex]

So you're still developing your brewing skills but having problems with (a) fermentation temps, (b) sanitation, and (c) yeast pitching rates, yet you're brewing 50 (!) gallon batches. Your guts are admirable, but whooo-doggy you may want to take a few steps back. :cross:

A) I have a bruin Belgian Trippel that I intentionally pitch at 95*F and it got a 43/50 and a gold medal. 74*F is far from unacceptable range for a stout where fruity esters will be welcomed. B) I have brewed over 50 beers without an unintended infection. (I did have one that got a pellicle after sitting in primary for 7 months because I neglected it and have brewed 3 intentional sours) C) Try calculating the necessary yeast cells for a 1.070 50 gallon stout- it's not as easy as typing it into Mr Malty... stepping up to a 5 gallon starter can introduce wild yeast at many different stages, though, I believe it is more of a problem with the fermenters.

All that said, if I really had all this down to a science, I'd turn pro. I don't claim to be, and I can name more than 100 commercial brews with known infection problems- some of which are very sought after beers (2010 Sexual Chocolate, 2009 Abyss, Barrel aged Decadence, Cigar City Sea Bass, Westbrook IPA, etc.)

 

[jkpq45]

So how's the coffee-sour-imperial brown now?

And what about that distilling business? Never heard of a local distillery willing to process a batch of homebrew.