Maybe accidentally Forgot to boil

interesting situation- I picked up some wort from a “free wort giveaway” at my local microbrewery yesterday. The guys at the brewery said it was unhopped, so I pitched some saison yeast right away with the idea of throwing some blood orange purée in later for bitterness, and dry hopping in secondary for aroma. Trying to make something like an orange saison...

It just occurred to me that the wort I picked up might not have been boiled. Not a big fan of sour beers, so this could be a brew failure...Given that fermentation is already underway, I am thinking about one of the following..

1. Boil the partially fermented beer now with hops and purée, and then try to re-pitch.

2. Let the fermentation finish, then boil with hops, then add (canned) blood orange purée and re-pitch.

3. Let the beer drop to target FG, then try to pasturize it before bottling to minimize lacto.

4. Leave it and see what happens?


Do any of these sound like viable ideas?

Thanks!

 

Its been boiled.

RDWHAHB

 

Lol, is this someone who picked up some wort from Coney Island as well?

 

Why would you boil wort without hops? Then add hops and boil again?

 

I'm guessing not, since he's in NZ.

 

Sorry, but I’m guessing it hasn’t been boiled. It could be that the brewery is making a high gravity beer, and what you picked up are second runnings that if they hadn’t given away, would have gone down the drain. That’s my guess. And I would do option 1.

 

Option #5, call the brewery and ask them if its been boiled. Then decide what to do from there.
I think I'd go ahead and boil it at this point.

 

No need to boil. Boiling now will ruin the beer as you would boil the yeast as well, say hello to forced autolysis.

Just brew a hop tea and pour it into the beer. Did this several times with raw, non boiled, ales, all fine as long as sanitation was done properly.

Dry hop as usual afterwards.

 

Just curious. What was the gravity of the free wort?

 

It was 1.06

 

How does one make hop tea? Just boil hops in a little bit of water?

 

Yes, you can even calculate the ibus with the brewers friend online ibu calculator. Just hack in the correct two volumes and don't forget to set the gravity of the boil to 1.00.

Edit, but use a reasonable amount of water, not only a little bit. The alphas want to be dissolved in something.

 

Now this is interesting- the calculator is showing greater hop utilization from adding 1 qt of hops tea to my batch than I would have experienced by boiling the hops with my entire 5 gallon batch! Does this sound right?

When should I add the tea? I am already past high krausen..

 

I'm not so sure. If it had been boiled, wouldn't the brewer have made a bittering addition of hops? And if they had, wouldn't they have noted that to anyone who picked up the extra wort?

The lesson in all of this is to ask what was done to the wort before it ended up in the hands of the homebrewer.

And it seems to me the best answer to all this was to call the brewer who made the wort and ASK.

 

Can you give me the numbers, tea volume, beer volume, alpha % and boil time please?

 

Thanks yooper (and everyone) I called the brewery

tea volume = 1/4 gallon
Beer volume = 5 gallons
Alpha =6.7%
Boil time = 60 minutes

 

Thx. 20g of hops should give you around 27 ibus in this constellation.

The absence of sugar and protein in the hop tea greatly increases alpha isomerisation. Based on personal experience, I think the calcs are pretty close to real life.

Edit : but I do not know if there is a maximum capacity per water volume for solving alpha acid. And I do not think that the calculator knows either, so I would increase the tea size to a gallon and maybe throw in some extract after boiling the hops, if too much water would thin out the beer too much.

 

Great info, that is what I suspected above.

But isn't 100 ibus / 20 quarts 5ibus/1quart and not 20 ibus? Meaning his max ibu in the combined batch can not get higher than 5 ibu with a hop tea size of one quart?

Anyway, increasing the hop tea boil volume might be a very good idea! I usually went for 1/3 of the total final volume and the calcs seemed spot on with this big volume.

 

Well, already had my coffee but here in UK it is time for beer now, so from here on you have to take over the math part again

 

Thanks, yooper and everyone.

I finally got in touch with the brewer who made the wort. He said that he boiled it for about 5 minutes, so at least the wort was sanitized! I suppose I may wind up with a cloudy beer, since the proteins probably didn’t have time to coagulate, etc. May not be too bad in a fruity saison..

I think I’ll try making a 1 gallon, 1.06 OG batch this weekend with enough hops to hit 100 ibu’s. I’ll then add this to the 5 gallon batch. This will allow me to increase my IBU’s to 100/6= 17 ibu, without watering down my beer. I am assuming the yeast will still have enough “umph” 7 days into fermentation to ferment the new wort I am adding?

 

Yes this should work well. Just to add, I have quite some experience with completely raw ales which basically never saw temperatures higher than mashing temperatures and clarity was never a problem.

What I am really looking forward to see is if you will have problems with DMS or not. DMS is only existing in the Wort after it has been heated above 80 degrees and after that it needs to be boiled off.... at least in theory. So in theory, your wort should be full of DMS as it was boiled for 5 minutes, long enough to build up levels of DMS but not long enough to boil it off afterwards.

Please keep us updated when it is finished!

 

Well, if it smells too much like corn, I’ll just use lager yeast next time without a D-rest and create buttery-popcorn ale. A truly strange and unique way to imbibe! Not that I could replicate this whole wonky process if I tried...

All jokes aside, thanks for the help. I usually plan out my brews a little better, but at least I learned about a lot about hop utilization, autoalysis and boiling during the process of trying to salvage this one! I’ll let you guys know how it turns out...

 

Here is an interesting update on this brew. I took a hydrometer reading before the gallon of highly hopped beer as stated above. The FG is 1.005, which is not surprising given the barely boiled wort. What does surprise me though is the color. The wort was a amber color (think Newcastle brown ale), but the hydrometer sample is clear as Pilsner! Somehow the caramel color disappeared during fermentation.

The taste is quite interesting- dry, citrusy, and floral. No sign or smell of infection or DMS yet..Pretty much what you could expect from a brew that hashas 3lbs of orange purée and has been dry-hopped with Citra hops... I just really want to know why it got lighter???

 

My guess is that it is the acid from the puree. Squeeze some lemon juice into black tea and you will see what I mean

 

Update on the odd brew - racking to a secondary today for cold crash and kegging. I also bottled a couple of gallons straight from the primary, since I only have a 3 gallon keg.A little color came back, thanks to the dark wort I added late with hops.

It’s very cloudy still. Bits of orange pulp floating about. Some sludge on to of the primary fermenter - I’m hoping this is yeast boats and the dry hops I added, though I’m a little afraid of infection, since the FG is 1.003 (wow!).

The smell is awesome! Smells like Citra hops and oranges. It taste like grapefruit juice, almost numbs your tounge with acidity. Wondering if I am going to end up with something more like dry cider than beer.

Going to cold crash 3 gallons and keg and let the portion I put in bottles carb for 3 weeks. I will let you know how it goes!