Beer that ages well?

[Revvy]

Possibly? But this in no way has to do with long term aging. Any beer that delicate should not be aged.

+1 to this....

That's the same with using the autolysis fallacy and using champagne and mead as an example...Just like autolysis is only a true concern to LAGERS, where any perceived flaws stand out 10 fold...If a beer or champagne for that matter is that sensitive to to something, it's not worth storing anyway.

The beers that people tend to cellar (commercial OR homebrew) are going to be pretty strong ales to begin with.

And tonedeaf...if people weren't helped by those "links to my own threads" so much, and I didn't get feed back that they actually learned from them, and were glad I took the hours that it usually took to write them, I wouldn't do it...So bite me.

 

[Tonedef131]

+1 to this....

That's the same with using the autolysis fallacy and using champagne and mead as an example...Just like autolysis is only a true concern to LAGERS, where any perceived flaws stand out 10 fold...If a beer or champagne for that matter is that sensitive to to something, it's not worth storing anyway.

The beers that people tend to cellar (commercial OR homebrew) are going to be pretty strong ales to begin with.

If you want to say it's only a true concern for lagers from a flavor stand point that is fine. I will agree that most beers being laid down are not going to be negatively effected by autolysis. But you said that it NEVER happens in bottles earlier, which is inaccurate.

We have gotten pretty far of topic. The OP thought beers only could improve with age that had yeast in them...which couldn't be further from the truth. I simply provided the aspects of brewing that tend to have the biggest impact on shelf life.

And tonedeaf...if people weren't helped by those "links to my own threads" so much, and I didn't get feed back that they actually learned from them, and were glad I took the hours that it usually took to write them, I wouldn't do it...So bite me.

I was just kidding. Do I have to use smilies around here in order for people to be able to take a joke?

 

[Revvy]

We have gotten pretty far of topic. The OP thought beers only could improve with age that had yeast in them...which couldn't be further from the truth.

Actually you're the only one who doesn't think beers with yeast in them don't improve with age...many of us do.

....Including many commercial breweries.

Hell I think my never dump your beer thread has MANY instances of beers with yeast in them IMPROVING over time...

And many extremely strong beers NEED months or years to mellow out and become complex, isn't that NOT IMPROVING WITH AGE???

Yeast is not the bane of beers that you seem to think it is...

 

[Revvy]

I agree with Revvy too. Talking about autolysis in home brewing is pointless since its such a rarity. Actually unheard of in most polls. That's its hardly worth even mentioning to a noob. In fact, I believe that most people 20-30 years ago mistakenly thought it was occurring. What they probably had was infection due to a lack of sanitation or they had inferior ingredients.

I still believe that POSSIBLY autolysis WAS a concern to homebrewers 20-30 years ago, when the yeast came in dry cakes, of dubious heritage and came across from where homebrewing was legalized in the hot cargo holds of ships and may have sat for months in terrible conditioned...In other words was unhealthy to begin with.

And therefore may have crapped out and made for nastiness, (and also was prone to stick fermentation as well.) and tales of it just continued to perpetuate over time, even though yeasts are much more healthy and fresh, and more is understood about them nowaday....people gravitate to the negative and fear and still perpetuate those worries...over and over ad over....

And I still maintain that as much as I like Palmer, he contributed to the hysteria.....I mean noone but me seems to notice that that section on the scary autolysis appears in the chapter on lagering. He is not talking about it with ales...or beers in general..just lagers..because flaws are more perceptable in lagers...since in essence most commercial lagers are tasteless...anything would stand out..

and I think most new brewers have crapped themselves at the mere thought long before the notice the closer to the section either.

John Palmer

As a final note on this subject, I should mention that by brewing with healthy yeast in a well-prepared wort, many experienced brewers, myself included, have been able to leave a beer in the primary fermenter for several months without any evidence of autolysis.

Although were talking about bottles and not the usual long primary stuff....this paragraph gets swallowed up in all the fear hysteria....

 

[Schlenkerla]

And I still maintain that as much as I like Palmer, he contributed to the hysteria.....I mean no one but me seems to notice that that section on the scary autolysis appears in the chapter on lagering. He is not talking about it with ales...or beers in general..just lagers..because flaws are more perceptable in lagers...since in essence most commercial lagers are tasteless...anything would stand out..

Another point to add to this it was more common to let it sit on the yeast for a longer time. But thats the nature of lagering and diacetyl rests.

Stirs up the hysteria due to ignorance. The incessant need to rack after 5-7 days.

 

[Tonedef131]

And many extremely strong beers NEED months or years to mellow out and become complex, isn't that NOT IMPROVING WITH AGE???

So your telling me you think these beers would not improve with age if the yeast wasn't present? I am not saying everyone should rack beers right away, leaving beer on the yeast cake during fermentation is a totally different discussion and has no place within this one. I am talking about in the bottle only.

Read the line of mine you quoted. The OP thought beers could ONLY improve with age if yeast was present in the bottle. Mellowing is due to many different things happening within a beer, and yeast doesn't need to be present for a beer to mellow. Once the yeast in the bottle is done eating the priming sugar it will drop out of solution and have very little if anything to do with the "mellowing" happening within the beer. After years of sitting in the bottle the yeast in the bottom are either A) doing nothing B) autolyzing. This is what I said in my first post, perhaps I wasn't clear about that but I meant that if they are doing anything after long term aging it's autolysis.

Autolysis is not a 4 letter word, it is not always bad, and we don't have to freak out every time someone brings it up at an appropriate time during a discussion.

 

[yermej]

I probably shouldn't jump in here, but bourbon's good stuff. (It's a hell of a drink.)

Though it may not be all that applicable to beginner brewing knowledge, autolysis is important to know about. It does happen in the bottle. Perhaps more important is the amount of autolyzing yeast. Apparently in low levels autolysis adds the bready, biscuity, mouth-feely qualities that are often desired in sparkling wines and perhaps in certain beers (though most articles focus on wines). At higher levels, the enzymes that result from autolysis cause the **** flavors that most brewers associate with autolysis.

That is, it's not so much that large amounts of autolysis are more noticeable, but that they lead to a different chemical process that doesn't occur with small amounts of autolysis.

Anyway, thanks for all the arguing. I actually learned something as a result.

[citation needed]? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autolysis_(wine)
Yeah, it's wikipedia, but it's a decent start. There are quite a few papers out there as well if you want to get all pedantic (which I would do if I hadn't been drinking already).

 

[beerkrump]

Okay, if dormancy is possible...

If it wasn't possible, there would not be dry yeast . Maybe no yeast because it could not rely on dormancy to make it through harsh times.

After years of sitting in the bottle the yeast in the bottom are either A) doing nothing B) autolyzing. This is what I said in my first post, perhaps I wasn't clear about that but I meant that if they are doing anything after long term aging it's autolysis.

Your first post never used the word 'years' or 'long term'. It was just 'doing nothing but autolyzing'. Again, the point of a lot of this is not the information, but that fact that you refrain from qualifying some of your comments.

We seem to agree that autolysis happens. It is a natural process and is what happens when an organisms cellular structure is broken down by its own enzymes. This does not happen to healthy yeast cells that have completed their life cycle, but rather cells that have died before that natural end. So, for autolysis to occur, your yeast must have been stressed and killed. If you are using healthy yeast, do not severely over pitch, and maintain a proper environment throughout the life of your beer, you've nothing to fear.

If you have the forethought and patience, you can store your beer for a decade under proper conditions and have no fear of your brew being ruined by autolysis.

 

[Revvy]

If it wasn't possible, there would not be dry yeast . Maybe no yeast because it could not rely on dormancy to make it through harsh times.



Your first post never used the word 'years' or 'long term'. It was just 'doing nothing but autolyzing'. Again, the point of a lot of this is not the information, but that fact that you refrain from qualifying some of your comments.

We seem to agree that autolysis happens. It is a natural process and is what happens when an organisms cellular structure is broken down by its own enzymes. This does not happen to healthy yeast cells that have completed their life cycle, but rather cells that have died before that natural end. So, for autolysis to occur, your yeast must have been stressed and killed. If you are using healthy yeast, do not severely over pitch, and maintain a proper environment throughout the life of your beer, you've nothing to fear.

If you have the forethought and patience, you can store your beer for a decade under proper conditions and have no fear of your brew being ruined by autolysis.

+1,000,000,000 to ALL you said....All Four paragraphs....I read his first parargraph to be "you can't store your beer, it WILL autolysise and your beer will taste like ****."

Which is patently absurd...which I said originally and offered Charlie Papazians quite contrary opinion.

And I guess I wasn't the only one who noticed it as well.......



I said it earlier, but you said it better...autolysis is not the inevitable end of healthy yeast. It is the unnatural end that is a product of yeast health...like peritinitus or even cancer in us....it is an abberation....UNHEALTHY AND STRESSED yeast autolyse... but rarely do we have unhealthy yeast these days, most of the yeast we pitch is fresh...and unless we are making a huge beer, even underpitching will not NECESSARILY produce stressed out yeast. Or stressed out yeast that will automatically autlolyse....



In fact you can buy HEALTHY dead yest in most health food stores and even in brewshops nowadays as a boil addition as a yeast energizers.... those diatary suppliment head yeast are NOT autloysised cells....If you want autolysed yeast, get thee some vegemite....

There's a bit of a difference between dead yeast hulls, and vegemite.....

Here's Palmers description of Yeast hulls;

Yeast Hulls - This is essentially dead yeast, the carcasses of which act as agglomeration sites and contain some useful residual lipids.

So Palmer is saying we add autlolysed cells to our boil...or dead cells???

I believe there's a difference.

This is a good article on using yeast hulls for stuck fermentations in winemakeing and I know it;s used in brewing as well...

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Wine/Resources/problemfermentationandyeasthulls.htm

 

[beerkrump]

I have my moments...

 

[bob1852]

crap, I've had a batch of Apfelwein sitting on it's yeast cake since I started the batch on March 7th....

might as well throw it out, eh?

 

[beerkrump]

Cue "I'll dispose of it response."

 

[Tonedef131]

Your first post never used the word 'years' or 'long term'. It was just 'doing nothing but autolyzing'. Again, the point of a lot of this is not the information, but that fact that you refrain from qualifying some of your comments.

You're probably right, but I didn't know that this was going to turn into the discussion that it did. I figured in a thread about aging beer I wouldn't have to quantify by saying "long term".

I should have just wrote that "the yeast are doing nothing OR autolysizing" instead of "the yeast are doing nothing BUT autolysizing" and we all could have saved a lot of typing. I didn't think I had to specify dormancy as the other thing yeast were doing, I figured it went without saying that the yeast went dormant.

crap, I've had a batch of Apfelwein sitting on it's yeast cake since I started the batch on March 7th....

might as well throw it out, eh?

Yeah, but because it's apple wine not because it's been on the cake that long.

 

[bob1852]

Yeah, but because it's apple wine not because it's been on the cake that long.

touche' my friend, touche'.....

the only reason I haven't bottled it yet is because I'm waiting till my Graff is done, and I don't want to waste bottles on Apfelwein

 

[Revvy]

Hell I just told zac I was never ever gonna bottle my beer ever again, and was just going to drink it out of primary with a straw...but then I thought, CRAP, there's yeast in there as well...so I guess I'm just gonna drink my wort straight from the boil kettle...



But then I read this...http://www.fossilfuelsbrewingco.com/

Amber Ale: Brewing Beer from 45-Million-Year-Old Yeast

Aw hell, you mean yeast can last for 45 million years and not Autloysize..and we can even make BEER??????

And maybe I can cellar MY beer just like the big guys?

Really???

Maybe I don't need to dump this godfersaken hobby afterall...

Maybe the yeasts AREN'T evil....

Only my LIVER is

(I have a shirt like that, btw......got it from the med students from one of their school sanctioned drinking binges.)

 

[yermej]

I said it earlier, but you said it better...autolysis is not the inevitable end of healthy yeast. It is the unnatural end that is a product of yeast health...like peritinitus or even cancer in us....it is an abberation....UNHEALTHY AND STRESSED yeast autolyse... but rarely do we have unhealthy yeast these days, most of the yeast we pitch is fresh...and unless we are making a huge beer, even underpitching will not NECESSARILY produce stressed out yeast. Or stressed out yeast that will automatically autlolyse....

Sorry if I've missed it, but do you have a reference stating that only unhealthy, stressed yeast autolyse? From my reading, yeast (healthy or not) dies and then, over time, autolysis occurs. As you said, there's a difference between dead and autolysed yeast, but from what I've read that difference seems to be time rather than health.

Also, yeast hulls are the cell walls after they have been partially degraded by autolysis and then separated from the remaining autolysis products.

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[flyangler18]

Fact: Yeast cells lyse, but this does not necessarily mean the meaty, vomit-inducing stench homebrewers have collectively defined it to be. Lysing is a biological certainty.

In lighter beer, this can assert itself as nuttiness or yeastiness that is out of character for the style.

For truly repugnant flavors and aromas to emerge, the yeast needs to be seriously abused by a number of compounding factors- hot fermentation temps, poor yeast health, underpitching by a huge margin, etc.

Can we please stop with the Lies Told To Children?

Noonan in New Brewing Lager Beer (pg 94):

In solutions lacking obtainable nutrients, the culture yeast will cease reproducing. When they can no longer sustain their own metabolic functions, albumin-, hemicellulose-, and vitamin-dissolving enzymes are activated, which reduce the yeast cell to amino acids and other simple substances. This autolyzation releases typical organic decomposition flavors into beer that is not racked off its sediment.

 

[broadbill]

And in the case of our own homebrew, in the Dec 07 Zymurgy Charlie Papazian reviewed bottles of homebrew going back to the first AHC competition that he had stored, and none of them went bad, some had not held up but most of them he felt were awesome...We're talking over 20 years worth of beers. And I can assure you he never mentioned the word autlolysis.

I think its ironic that CP didn't find any evidence of autolysis in those AHA samples, considering that his book is responsible for perpetuating the whole autolysis myth!

(in my opinion anyway, its the only source I've come across that specifically mentions it in any detail and concludes that it should be a source of concern for the homebrewer).

As far as I can tell, that is also where the whole "Rack to secondary the MINUTE fermentation slows down" theory comes from.

Maybe he has updated the information in subsequent editions of the book, and I haven't bother to go back to look (why when you have a resource like HBT?).

Don't get me wrong...its a great book, lots of good information and probably got maybe 90% of us into homebrewing, but did have put out there a few less-than-accurate ideas (HSA being another notable example).

...I'm going to take cover now...

 

[Schlenkerla]

Fact: Yeast cells lyse, but this does not necessarily mean the meaty, vomit-inducing stench homebrewers have collectively defined it to be.

In lighter beer, this can assert itself as nuttiness or yeastiness that is out of character for the style.

For truly repugnant flavors and aromas to emerge, the yeast needs to be seriously abused by a number of compounding factors- hot fermentation temps, poor yeast health, underpitching by a huge margin, etc.

Can we please stop with the Lies Told To Children?

True - One of the few places where this is common place is with Belgian style lambics made the old fashion way with cool ships. Many of the above things happen but they have 24 months if not longer to reconcile or remove the sickness thats prevalent in warm weather fermentation. Before it was accidental now just the way its done.

Some or all of these are involved and require nutrients to do their magic.

1. enterobactor
2. lactobacillus
3. oxidative yeasts - All 5 Bretts...
4. pediococcus
5. saccharomyces

Fricking Canibals!!

 

[Pith]

I'm bumping this old thread to remind everyone how much we love Revvy (read the entire thread; very entertaining), but also to ask a question. If we're only meant to have healthy yeast to prevent the likelihood of off-flavours or autolysis or whatever, why do we use dead yeast as nutrient?

I just made a starter to refresh my WB-06 (hefeweizen yeast) and early on in the fermentation of the starter, some of the yeast fell out of solution quite quickly, which I assumed that for such a lo-floc yeast meant that these were the dead ones. I assumed that the living yeast had munched on some of the retirees, which was why they were fizzing so pleasantly and smelling reasonably nice.

After crash-cooling, I poured the liquid off the yeast into another bottle. It didn't taste that nice, I assumed mainly because it was just fermented dry wheat malt extract with no hops or anything, and it didn't taste "off" or anything, just not as nice as the All-Grain Hefe I made with it. Obvious outcome, I know.

Just mainly getting it off my chest and making sure it's okay to pitch a vial of yeast with dead ones in it.