1st attempt at bottle harvesting - single bottle of Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar

[TimpanogosSlim]

Less than 24 hours. It got a little jiggled yesterday. No additional gravity readings yet.

 

[pabloj13]

Less than 24 hours. It got a little jiggled yesterday. No additional gravity readings yet.

Once you warm it up, give it a good swirl without shaking it. Rouse the yeast up off the bottom real well and then give it a couple days and check the gravity. If no change, I would make a new starter and pitch it at high krausen.

 

[TimpanogosSlim]

Did as suggested. Maybe i didn't swirl it well enough, but there is no gravity movement - still about 1.038.

Tasted a bit of the hydrometer sample. Tastes like sweet, green, weak beer. So no infection is apparent. Probably just under pitched.

Since it didn't seem to be making a difference, I cut the power to the diy fermwrap.

... EDIT:

And then decided I'd been impatient, and a ***** about rousing the yeast. Gave it a better swirl and turned the heat back on. Will check again Wednesday night (last chance to buy yeast this week is thursday night -- I work within 10 minutes of 3 different LHBS but live a good hour from them).

 

[pabloj13]

Did as suggested. Maybe i didn't swirl it well enough, but there is no gravity movement - still about 1.038.

Tasted a bit of the hydrometer sample. Tastes like sweet, green, weak beer. So no infection is apparent. Probably just under pitched.

Since it didn't seem to be making a difference, I cut the power to the diy fermwrap.

... EDIT:

And then decided I'd been impatient, and a ***** about rousing the yeast. Gave it a better swirl and turned the heat back on. Will check again Wednesday night (last chance to buy yeast this week is thursday night -- I work within 10 minutes of 3 different LHBS but live a good hour from them).

Sounds like a reasonable plan to me.

What was your recipe and mash temp? Is it possible the yeast did their job and there are just a ton of unfermentables in there? Also, one thing that I did notice that could be a problem was your original culturing involved just guessing the OG of the starter wort. Potentially if you were off by a bit you could have stressed the yeast. If your recipe and mashing were fine, that would be my guess as to what happened.

 

[TimpanogosSlim]

Here's the recipe as exported from brewtarget. I built it from a clone recipe i found here, then adjusted slightly based on what is advertised on the bottle.

I did not pre-heat my mash tun. I dumped in the strike water at 175f, poured in grain, stirred, and threw on the lid. My notes say that the 1st and 2nd runnings both measured 154f.

I used basically the same batch sparge for the "Belgian Brother" i made some weeks back.

Hazelnut Brown Nectar - American Brown Ale
================================================================================
Batch Size: 5.478 gal
Boil Size: 6.789 gal
Boil Time: 90.000 min
Efficiency: 75%
OG: 1.062
FG: 1.012
ABV: 6.5%
Bitterness: 35.3 IBUs (Tinseth)
Color: 21 SRM (Morey)

Fermentables
================================================================================
Name Type Amount Mashed Late Yield Color
Pale Malt (2 Row) US Grain 8.500 lb Yes No 79%% 2 L
Munich Malt Grain 1.500 lb Yes No 80%% 9 L
Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L Grain 1.200 lb Yes No 74%% 80 L
Brown Malt (British Chocolate) Grain 8.800 oz Yes No 70%% 65 L
Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L Grain 5.600 oz Yes No 75%% 10 L
Caramel/Crystal Malt - 120L Grain 5.600 oz Yes No 72%% 120 L
Pale Chocolate Malt Grain 4.000 oz Yes No 71%% 215 L
Total grain: 12.700 lb

Hops
================================================================================
Name Alpha Amount Use Time Form IBU
Perle 9.3%% 0.900 oz Boil 60.000 min Pellet 24.9
Sterling 7.6%% 0.600 oz Boil 30.000 min Pellet 10.4

Misc
================================================================================
Name Type Use Amount Time
Irish Moss Fining Boil 2.000 qt 15.000 min
Yeast Nutrient Other Primary 0.500 tsp 0.000 s



Mash
================================================================================
Name Type Amount Temp Target Time
First Batch Infusion 6.500 gal 175.000 F 150.000 F 60.000 min
Second Batch Infusion 2.000 gal 170.000 F 170.000 F 20.000 min

 

[pabloj13]

You confident in your thermometer?

 

[TimpanogosSlim]

Reasonably confident, yes. It's a popular Polder model. I haven't stuck the probe in ice water, but I've only had it a few months and have not abused it.

I live at 4900 feet so i guess my boiling point is about 203f. I can check the thermometer tonight.


Does anybody know for sure whether the hazelnut brown is unfiltered and bottle conditioned w/ pacman rather than some other yeast?

 

[pabloj13]

Reasonably confident, yes. It's a popular Polder model. I haven't stuck the probe in ice water, but I've only had it a few months and have not abused it.

I live at 4900 feet so i guess my boiling point is about 203f. I can check the thermometer tonight.


Does anybody know for sure whether the hazelnut brown is unfiltered and bottle conditioned w/ pacman rather than some other yeast?

Maybe you could email them? I know a lot of the breweries seem to respond.

 

[TimpanogosSlim]

Email sent. Will report back what they have to say (if anything)

 

[TimpanogosSlim]

OK, gravity is down to 1.031, but this is starting to annoy me. Tomorrow I'll buy a smackpack of pacman so that i can get this finished right.

Also, the Rogue Nation has not responded to my epistle.

 

[TimpanogosSlim]

1 of the 3 LHBS here sells pacman yeast. The most successful of the three gave me a lecture about how the sole source of pacman yeast smack-packs doesn't like to ship them with cold packs and they got tired of selling dead yeast and getting angry customers. Whatever.

I made 800ml of 1.030 wort w/ DME and boiling water in my 1L flask and waited for it to cool to room temperature before pitching the pacman yeast in it.

It's spinning now. I'll pitch that into the fermenter tomorrow night i suppose.

Oh, and i inoculated 7 slants. Because paying $7 for liquid yeast pushes my cheap bastard buttons.

 

[Geohound]

How'd it turn out? Did you ever figure out if Rogue uses a different yeast in bottle? I'm looking at doing this same recipe. And which LHBS sells pacman? last time i was in beernut they didn't have any.

 

[TimpanogosSlim]

How'd it turn out? Did you ever figure out if Rogue uses a different yeast in bottle? I'm looking at doing this same recipe. And which LHBS sells pacman? last time i was in beernut they didn't have any.

Salt city brew supply had pacman. Beernut gave me attitude.

I have 7 good slants of the stuff now, too.

Rogue never responded.

I have been pretty busy. Moved this beer to a keg and purged and sealed but did not carb. I am going to test some more samples this weekend - properly degassed - and then if i am still unconvinced i will start feeding the stuff to a champagne yeast starter.

 

[NordeastBrewer77]

How'd it turn out? Did you ever figure out if Rogue uses a different yeast in bottle? I'm looking at doing this same recipe. And which LHBS sells pacman? last time i was in beernut they didn't have any.

If the Rogue bottle says 'Pacman Yeast' yeast in the ingredients, then it's Pacman in the bottle. Harvest away.

 

[TimpanogosSlim]

If the Rogue bottle says 'Pacman Yeast' yeast in the ingredients, then it's Pacman in the bottle. Harvest away.

Well, it's well known that dead guy ale is filtered.

 

[NordeastBrewer77]

Well, it's well known that dead guy ale is filtered.

Hmmm, never heard that before. I've heard of a lot of guys harvesting from Rogue bottles, not sure if they're doing it from Dead Guy. I know the Shakespear Stout works, done that. I think a few of their other lighter beers are also good for a harvest.

Edit: with a simple search here on HBT, I seem to have found some things that contradict the 'well known' fact that Dead Guy is filtered. I was pretty sure I'd seen a lot about harvesting from Dead Guy before, but I wanted to be sure. Here's a link to one thread, there's links to other's in that thread, lot's of guys talking about harvesting Pacman from Dead Guy Ale.

 

[TimpanogosSlim]

Hmmm, never heard that before. I've heard of a lot of guys harvesting from Rogue bottles, not sure if they're doing it from Dead Guy. I know the Shakespear Stout works, done that. I think a few of their other lighter beers are also good for a harvest.

Edit: with a simple search here on HBT, I seem to have found some things that contradict the 'well known' fact that Dead Guy is filtered. I was pretty sure I'd seen a lot about harvesting from Dead Guy before, but I wanted to be sure. Here's a link to one thread, there's links to other's in that thread, lot's of guys talking about harvesting Pacman from Dead Guy Ale.

Alright, I thought I'd come across threads indicating that Dead Guy is filtered.

But i agree that if there's sediment in the bottle, and it says pacman on the label, go for it.

Just build a larger starter than i did.

 

[NordeastBrewer77]

Just build a larger starter than i did.

The key to harvesting is actually to start the starter steps out small and low gravity, then slowly step it up to size. A typical bottle only have a few (give or take) million cells.... think like a year old smack pack or vial, like <1% viability.... that first step is really jut to wake up whatever yeasts survived the whole commercial packaging, distribution and wholesale process. After a slow build at low gravity (1.02), you then wanna slowly step it up at 1.04 until you reach brewing size with the starter. It helps to measure ml of yeast solids, that way you can at least guesstimate cell count in these starters.
I think I posted a link to my blog on harvesting and stepping up, but in the vein of not over posting, there's a link to my blogs in my sigline.

 

[Geohound]

Salt city brew supply had pacman. Beernut gave me attitude.

I have 7 good slants of the stuff now, too.

Rogue never responded.

I have been pretty busy. Moved this beer to a keg and purged and sealed but did not carb. I am going to test some more samples this weekend - properly degassed - and then if i am still unconvinced i will start feeding the stuff to a champagne yeast starter.

I've started going to slc brew myself. If you need help sampling any of that beer im free Let me know how it turns out. If its close i'll be brewing your recipe next week now that I have a carboy free.

 

[TimpanogosSlim]

Well, i cracked open one of the 12oz bottles i made, and, it's good! one way or another it worked out in the end.

Not enough hazelnut in the bottles - they got 2 drops each from a disposable pipette. Dunno how it's going in the keg, but I'm looking forward to it.