Smell from the airlock...

[Pdeezy]

From your experience, how close is the smell coming out of the airlock to the smell of your finished beeers? I will post the recipe below, but i can really smell those cascade hops when i caught a whif as i was changing out some ice packs. I still have a long way to go, but I hope it is close to that. I have a feeling that it will melow out some which is why i was planning on dry hopping with a cascade/columbus comobo.

Thanks for your input.



BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Hop Dread Red
Brewer: PDeezy
Asst Brewer:
Style: American Amber Ale
TYPE: Extract
Taste: (30.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 2.82 gal
Post Boil Volume: 2.60 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Bottling Volume: 4.60 gal
Estimated OG: 1.059 SG
Estimated Color: 16.7 SRM
Estimated IBU: 60.2 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 0.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
1 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 1 12.5 %
3 lbs Light Dry Extract [Boil for15 min](8.0 S Dry Extract 8 37.5 %
1.00 oz Cascade [5.40 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 7 8.8 IBUs
1.00 oz Cascade [5.40 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 10 0.0 IBUs
1.00 oz Cascade [5.40 %] - Boil 12.0 min Hop 9 4.8 IBUs
1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05) Yeast 11 -
4.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 2 3.1 %
4.0 oz Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 3 3.1 %
1.00 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - Boil 60. Hop 6 29.7 IBUs
8.0 oz Brown Sugar, Light (8.0 SRM) Sugar 5 6.3 %
3 lbs Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 4 37.5 %


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out
Total Grain Weight: 8 lbs
----------------------------

Sparge: Remove grains, and prepare to boil wort
Notes:
------


Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[HOMEBREWZ]

yeah i made a ipa with cascades and it smelled great but after bottling the hops mellowed out a bit , it was still really good but next time ill probably do more to account for this so i say do the dry hop. my 2 cents

 

[Pdeezy]

Ok thanks. I plan on leaving it in the bucket for 3 weeks, so should I throw the hops in after a week - giving them 2 weeks in the primary before I bottle?

 

[dave1226]

Ok thanks. I plan on leaving it in the bucket for 3 weeks, so should I throw the hops in after a week - giving them 2 weeks in the primary before I bottle?

Aren't you supposed to rack to a glass carboy for secondary? At least I thought that was the consensus as I've been researching. Hops in glass carboy then rack your wort on top.

 

[brewd00d]

Its always such a sweet smell coming out of the airlock, but then slowly disappears after the yeast does their job. The aroma will probably stick with the beer till you drink it but once its fully carbonated it wont taste AS bitter if you tasted the wort after the boil.

 

[brewd00d]

I didnt really answer question. I would say it comes out very close to what it smells out of the air lock to the finished beer.

 

[Pdeezy]

I've read a lot that says its ok, or even better to leave it in your primary for up to a month and let the yeast do some work cleaning up their mess instead of racking to a secondary.

If that was the case i would just rack to my bottling bucket for 2 weeks.

 

[dave1226]

I've read a lot that says its ok, or even better to leave it in your primary for up to a month and let the yeast do some work cleaning up their mess instead of racking to a secondary.

If that was the case i would just rack to my bottling bucket for 2 weeks.

Yeah I've also read that you should leave it in the primary for 2, 3, or 4 weeks but because of the dry hopping, you rack to secondary. I'm fairly new to this so I'm prolly completely wrong.

 

[HopKeller]

Aren't you supposed to

The answer to any question following these words is generally "no" or "why?".

 

[Qhrumphf]

I've dry-hopped right in to my primary multiple times and always had results I've been happy with.

That said, to answer the OP...it depends on the brew. I've had some kick out some really nasty sulphury stuff. My kolsch in primary now did it until active fermentation ended. And my hard cider makes my entire apartment stink like rotten eggs for a few days. Yeast do their own thing, they do it well, and sometimes it smells downright nasty while there's absolutely nothing wrong. Don't trust the airlock smell to mean anything at all, good or bad.

 

[dave1226]

I've dry-hopped right in to my primary multiple times and always had results I've been happy with.

That said, to answer the OP...it depends on the brew. I've had some kick out some really nasty sulphury stuff. My kolsch in primary now did it until active fermentation ended. And my hard cider makes my entire apartment stink like rotten eggs for a few days. Yeast do their own thing, they do it well, and sometimes it smells downright nasty while there's absolutely nothing wrong. Don't trust the airlock smell to mean anything at all, good or bad.

Wow, I never heard that before. That's really good to know. Thank you so much for the info. I would have thought something was wrong if I smelled rotten eggs coming from the airlock. But then again, I'm such a noob. Cheers!

 

[Pdeezy]

I've dry-hopped right in to my primary multiple times and always had results I've been happy with.

That said, to answer the OP...it depends on the brew. I've had some kick out some really nasty sulphury stuff. My kolsch in primary now did it until active fermentation ended. And my hard cider makes my entire apartment stink like rotten eggs for a few days. Yeast do their own thing, they do it well, and sometimes it smells downright nasty while there's absolutely nothing wrong. Don't trust the airlock smell to mean anything at all, good or bad.

I am going to dry hop in my primary as well. I know i want to put the hops in something so that i do not have problems when racking to my bottling bucket, but i was wondering if you had any experience with hop sacks and/or tea balls? To me it seems that a tea ball that was attached to the lid of my primary so that it would hang about half way down into the young beer would work best. As a hop bag would float, and i dont really want to add any other foreign objects in there to weigh it down.

 

[milwaukee]

I dry hop in the primary pretty frequently. Two weeks for dry hopping sounds little long though. If you dry hop for too long, you can pick up some vegetative flavors.

You also want to wait until your beer is really finished throwing off a lot of CO2. If you dry hop while it's still bubbling away, you can lose a lot of those nice hope volatile compounds right out through the airlock.

As to the original question -- Jamil Zainasheff has a good book out on yeast. It's got a great section on the different compounds yeast toss off during fermentation. I ended up reading it because I had an IPA that was putting out some sulfery smells -- and that worried me. The book talks about how during the multiple stages of fermentation yeast are going to produce a lot of different byproducts (sulfer when they're stressed). And these can be read as indicators of how fermentation is going... so smells you get could be indicators of how the beer will smell... or a number of other things.

Point is -- the smells you get can be an indicator or the nice flavors you're going to get -- but they also could be indicators of your yeast -- the party they're throwing in there, and how well it's going.

Hope it turns out well.

 

[solbes]

The nice thing about 5 gallon carboys, is that you minimize oxygen exposure during secondary because you can fill it to the neck. I dry hop in secondary for this reason. Also cold crash there, and bulk age some of my bigger beers there.

Those are the only reasons I will rack to secondary now. If it's a normal gravity ale that won't be dry hopped, it stays in primary for 3 weeks and gets bottled or kegged.

 

[Pdeezy]

OK, so given that i do not have anything to rack in to except a bottling bucket, I will just leave it in the primary, and I will take a gravity reading after it's been fermenting for 2 weeks to ensure the yeast are done. I can hang a tea ball of hop pellets about half way into the beer, and will let them hang out for 7-10 days holding temps at about 68.

Here's a link to the beer i am sort of cloning. I am going for a fruitier finish than they have in their beer, but it's an awesome brew, so if i get anywhere close I will be extremely happy. Anyone had it?

http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/bear-republic-red-rocket-ale/1609/

 

[unionrdr]

My IPA fermented for 15 days to go down from a 1.050OG to FG of 1.010. I then dry hopped with 1.5oz of 3 different hops for 1 week. More than 10 days or so,& you can get grassy/vegetal flavors/aromas. I also used hop sacks to keep things cleaner. I let them float as I would tea bags in sun tea. Worked perfectly. All done in the primary too.

 

[Pdeezy]

My IPA fermented for 15 days to go down from a 1.050OG to FG of 1.010. I then dry hopped with 1.5oz of 3 different hops for 1 week. More than 10 days or so,& you can get grassy/vegetal flavors/aromas. I also used hop sacks to keep things cleaner. I let them float as I would tea bags in sun tea. Worked perfectly. All done in the primary too.

So you didn't mix them in or anything? Just open the lid and toss in the hop sack? It seems like they would get better use under the surface, maybe it worked because you used so many? Did you mean a 1/2 oz of 3 different hops totalling 1.5oz, or 1.5oz of three different hops totaling 4.5oz? Lol sorry for all the questions.

 

[DarthGoose]

I've dry-hopped right in to my primary multiple times and always had results I've been happy with.

That said, to answer the OP...it depends on the brew. I've had some kick out some really nasty sulphury stuff. My kolsch in primary now did it until active fermentation ended. And my hard cider makes my entire apartment stink like rotten eggs for a few days. Yeast do their own thing, they do it well, and sometimes it smells downright nasty while there's absolutely nothing wrong. Don't trust the airlock smell to mean anything at all, good or bad.

This. The first time I made my spotted cow clone I thought it was done for when I opened it up and smelled it. I would say continue to dry hop because they will only add aroma, not bitterness. Hop aroma tends to fade over time, so even if it's overpowering you can always just age it a few more weeks.

 

[Zixxer10R]

Aren't you supposed to rack to a glass carboy for secondary? At least I thought that was the consensus as I've been researching. Hops in glass carboy then rack your wort on top.

It's not really important what material the vessel is made of, just that you removed your beer from the trub/yeast cake.

 

[brewgasm135]

And my hard cider makes my entire apartment stink like rotten eggs for a few days.

Thanks, I'll make sure to never make a hard cider in my house, :s

 

[Qhrumphf]

Thanks, I'll make sure to never make a hard cider in my house, :s

Oh, the end product was totally worth it. But yeah, hard cider is definitely the worst smelling thing I've ever fermented.

 

[brewgasm135]

Hey, just noticed we are neighbors! Care to do a beer swap some time?

 

[Qhrumphf]

Always down for a swap...

 

[dave1226]

It's not really important what material the vessel is made of, just that you removed your beer from the trub/yeast cake.

Not trying to a jerk but, are you sure about that? I've heard that a thousand times already that you do not do secondary fermentation in anything but glass. They say that there's some kind of breakdown in the plastic during the secondary. Again, this is not me but for instance, when I called morebeer.com they told me that and then doing research online yielded the same thing. I'm not saying you're wrong cuz I'm 100% sure you've been doing this way longer than me.

 

[Qhrumphf]

My understanding is that's primarily relevant to plastic buckets, and for a short term secondary it's not an issue. When doing long secondaries (multiple months), plastic buckets have some slight oxygen permeability which can cause oxygenation problems. Glass carboys (and as I've been told, plastic better bottles) do not have this problem. But I've never tried a long secondary in a plastic bucket, and don't own any better bottles, so I can't say that from experience. Point is, for a week or so in secondary with dry hops, a bucket shouldn't be an issue.

Cheers.

 

[dave1226]

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining it. I'm starting to get a better understanding of this whole process called homebrewing. And that's what I want, to understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

 

[unionrdr]

It's also an old myth that most of the yeast settling to the bottom were dead. That's why they said to get it off the yeast cake asap. Bull cookies! They're going dormant,not dying by the millions. Otherwise,brewers couldn't get enough live yeast to reuse. I don't bother with secondaries unless oaking or something. Even drt hops work fine in primary. And when I did secondary,it was to let my dark ale soak up some bourbon infused oaky goodness for 8 days. No off flavors. Food grade plastic has never given off flavors of itself. It's just said to o2 permeability. Just like PET beer bottles. It seems to me cooper's told me that their PET bottles were good for up to 12 months or so. Buckets have been fine for me up to about 2 months.