Can Beer Ferment Too Long?

[GHBWNY]

I put a batch of Cal. Common (ext. kit) in ferm. on 4/25. Today is day 12, and it is still perking thru the airlock approx. every 90 sec.. Yeast was Saflager s-23, pitched at 59F. Ferm temp has been constant 61F. I saw a couple of AG recipes that call for a 2-3 week ferm. time for this beer, so maybe this prolonged activity is normal.

I also read that with this "lager-ale" hybrid, I might want to bring up the temp toward the end of ferm.. Any thoughts?

Obviously, it will stay in ferm. until activity ceases, plus a few days, before taking an FG reading. But, I have to leave town for a few days starting Sun., and didn't want to leave it in the ferm. bucket longer than necessary. I was hoping to have it in cold-crash while I was away, but that doesn't look likely with this ongoing activity.

 

[Johnnyhitch1]

Have never brewed a lager but can tell you I leave ALL of my ales in prmary for ATLEAST 2 weeks before racking to keg.

Ive heard with some saying over a month causes autolysis and off flavors but ive never experienced it myself with month+ primarys

Also that "prolonged" activity is most likely just the beer off gassing, healthy fermentations should take no longer than a couple days, after that its up to the yeast to clean up after themselves and drop out.

 

[GHBWNY]

Have never brewed a lager but can tell you I leave ALL of my ales in prmary for ATLEAST 2 weeks before racking to keg.

Ive heard with some saying over a month causes autolysis and off flavors but ive never experienced it myself with month+ primarys

Also that "prolonged" activity is most likely just the beer off gassing, healthy fermentations should take no longer than a couple days, after that its up to the yeast to clean up after themselves and drop out.

Aha! "Off-gassing" as in, just CO2 playing tricks with the airlock? This is the first time I've experienced this. My previous batches have stopped airlock activity in 3-4 days, so I expected what I was seeing was still fermentation. I guess it's time for an FG check. And another in a few days. Maybe I can cold-crash by Sunday afterall.

 

[ballsy]

I usually don't check gravity until around day 17 to see where I'm sitting. Some beers are at FG by then, some aren't. I have no experience with S-23, though there are many other posts here re: it and looks as if some have had fine results keeping it around 56 F, others have allowed to warm to certain degree over time then lager it, etc...Leaving beer in primary for few days longer has never done any harm!

 

[tmendick]

Have never brewed a lager but can tell you I leave ALL of my ales in prmary for ATLEAST 2 weeks before racking to keg.

Ive heard with some saying over a month causes autolysis and off flavors but ive never experienced it myself with month+ primarys

Also that "prolonged" activity is most likely just the beer off gassing, healthy fermentations should take no longer than a couple days, after that its up to the yeast to clean up after themselves and drop out.

According to BYO Style Profile by Jamil, it says 7 days in primary should be enough time for full attenuation then directly to keg.

Most important part is "Don't Rush It"

 

[MindenMan]

Jamil is a highly regarded beer brewing guru, and he probably has every piece of equipment for home brewing at his disposal. I will guess his fermentation times/days are right at the predicted day to finish before kegging. I said all of that to say this, your particular batch may not be done in 7 days, due to temp, pitching rate, mash temperature, and a host of other things. Please do not misunderstand, as I am not saying Jamil is wrong, I only suggest that you do two S.G. tests three days apart, before kegging.

 

[tmendick]

Correct. I should have bolded "should be enough time for full attenuation".
In fact, I'm going to do just that.

OP: check your gravity today and Friday to see if you have reached full atteunation.

 

[RM-MN]

I put a batch of Cal. Common (ext. kit) in ferm. on 4/25. Today is day 12, and it is still perking thru the airlock approx. every 90 sec.. Yeast was Saflager s-23, pitched at 59F. Ferm temp has been constant 61F. I saw a couple of AG recipes that call for a 2-3 week ferm. time for this beer, so maybe this prolonged activity is normal.

I also read that with this "lager-ale" hybrid, I might want to bring up the temp toward the end of ferm.. Any thoughts?

Obviously, it will stay in ferm. until activity ceases, plus a few days, before taking an FG reading. But, I have to leave town for a few days starting Sun., and didn't want to leave it in the ferm. bucket longer than necessary. I was hoping to have it in cold-crash while I was away, but that doesn't look likely with this ongoing activity.

If you had to leave town for a few months you might have to worry about off flavors from letting your beer sit in the fermenter but even then I'm not so sure. A guy I talk with said he left his beer in the fermenter for 8 months and that it still wasn't too long.

Jamil may well get his beer ready to keg in 7 days but most of us aren't that good. I'd rather leave my beer longer to be sure it is done fermenting, the yeast have cleaned up the intermediate compounds and have dropped out a bunch. I don't need to rush my beer only to have a bunch of yeast at the bottom of the bottle or keg.

 

[GHBWNY]

Correct. I should have bolded "should be enough time for full attenuation".
In fact, I'm going to do just that.

OP: check your gravity today and Friday to see if you have reached full atteunation.

Just after reading the "off-gassing" post, I took my first FG reading and it was right in the ballpark for this recipe (although I wouldn't mind it dropping a couple more points, as it started out a little on the low side of the OG scale). I'll check it again in a few days, as I always do before crashing. Aroma is delightful, plus I use a test glass and hydro, so I have a nice 6 oz. glass of CC waiting in the fridge for me after dinner tonight. That should tell me a lot.

Thanks for all the comments --- very helpful!

 

[GHBWNY]

Just a side-note: with each batch I brew, I throw out a "Name-the-Beer" contest for the fam and extended fam. For this batch of Cal. Common, we picked the 'winner' last night. It was my daughter and she called it, "Frisco Fog". If you know anything about the origin of the Steam Beer tradition, it's a very appropriate moniker.

 

[Blarneybrew]

If you had to leave town for a few months you might have to worry about off flavors from letting your beer sit in the fermenter but even then I'm not so sure. A guy I talk with said he left his beer in the fermenter for 8 months and that it still wasn't too long.

Jamil may well get his beer ready to keg in 7 days but most of us aren't that good. I'd rather leave my beer longer to be sure it is done fermenting, the yeast have cleaned up the intermediate compounds and have dropped out a bunch. I don't need to rush my beer only to have a bunch of yeast at the bottom of the bottle or keg.

I'd be surprised if that were a lager. I've left a lager on the trub for several weeks and noticed something. I forget what it was haha. But something was noticeably distinct, and I attributed to sitting on the trub. To be fair minded about it, there's a slight chance that the changes may have been attributed to my hop schedule

 

[fearwig]

Broken record time. Airlock is not a language. Do not try to learn it. Take gravity. Your beer may be done, or it may not be done, and you won't know until you have a reading.

When the reading is the same three days apart, it is done.

 

[GHBWNY]

Broken record time. Airlock is not a language. Do not try to learn it. Take gravity. Your beer may be done, or it may not be done, and you won't know until you have a reading.

When the reading is the same three days apart, it is done.

I get this. Although I always take 2 readings 3 days apart at end of ferm, I'm not experienced enough to know that continuing bubbling isn't necessarily continuing ferm. My last 2 batches stopped bubbling at 3-4 days, making me think that it was time to do an FG reading. I did, and 3 days later it was the same. So, I expected the same with this batch, except I knew nothing about "off-gassing" and I interpreted the continuous bubbling as an indication that it wasn't ready for an FG reading. From now on, it's a reading at 1 week after brew day (and again 3-4 days later) regardless of what the airlock is doing.

Question is, why did this batch bubble/off-gas 3X longer than other batches? Yeast? Hops? Style? Temp?

Thanks for the heads-up.

 

[freisste]

Possible reasons why it bubbled longer:

Change in temperature
Change in atmospheric pressure
Fermenter was jostled, releasing CO2

(I'm sure there are more.)

 

[fearwig]

Yeah, or the seal just sat slightly differently so a different amount seeped out there before enough pressure built to bubble the airlock, etc., etc.

I have never used an airlock even once, plenty of others have and don't now. If you feel like it, you can skip them entirely. A loose, sanitary covering like aluminum foil (carboy) or loose-fitting lid (bucket) works just fine. Contaminants don't just fly around in the air waiting to attack your beer, at least not in the kind of numbers they'd need to take off in wort with active yeast in it, or beer with alcohol in it. Yeast will outcompete, alcohol will inhibit.

The only exception is a dose of the bug big enough to overcome these factors, which IMO usually means direct contact or contact with raw grain dust. If you ferment somewhere that's not an issue, you're fine without any kind of seal. Every couple of days I crack the lid and peek at, sniff, and poke (ok not poke) my beer, and I've never had an infection.

There is ostensibly some reason to use airlocks when bulk aging in carboys, since the offgassed CO2 from transfer might displace O2 out the airlock (otherwise if the O2 remains in the carboy they will eventually mix). Otherwise I don't see the point.

Sorry, that was my canned airlock rant, it just pops out of me sometimes.

 

[GHBWNY]

Yeah, or the seal just sat slightly differently so a different amount seeped out there before enough pressure built to bubble the airlock, etc., etc.

I have never used an airlock even once, plenty of others have and don't now. If you feel like it, you can skip them entirely. A loose, sanitary covering like aluminum foil (carboy) or loose-fitting lid (bucket) works just fine. Contaminants don't just fly around in the air waiting to attack your beer, at least not in the kind of numbers they'd need to take off in wort with active yeast in it, or beer with alcohol in it. Yeast will outcompete, alcohol will inhibit.

The only exception is a dose of the bug big enough to overcome these factors, which IMO usually means direct contact or contact with raw grain dust. If you ferment somewhere that's not an issue, you're fine without any kind of seal. Every couple of days I crack the lid and peek at, sniff, and poke (ok not poke) my beer, and I've never had an infection.

There is ostensibly some reason to use airlocks when bulk aging in carboys, since the offgassed CO2 from transfer might displace O2 out the airlock (otherwise if the O2 remains in the carboy they will eventually mix). Otherwise I don't see the point.

Sorry, that was my canned airlock rant, it just pops out of me sometimes.

I like this post. It's practical, simple and seems effective. There sure is a lot of hubbub over contamination, infection, etc.. I appreciate all the modern precautions that are available, and because I've grown accustomed to brewing good beer with them, I'll probably stick with them.

At the same time, how did the 'old-timers' --- and I mean centuries ago --- maintain the conditions we consider absolute "musts" for the proper formation of beer? They certainly didn't have the same sanitizers, the means of controlling temp, the air-tight vessels, etc. that we do nowadays. Yet, we're essentially in this day and age trying to replicate those old beers with modern means. And it makes me wonder sometimes if we're overdoing it.

There seems to be a lot of emphasis --- if not paranoia --- over "infection". But from a simple logic standpoint, it seems you would almost have to intentionally contaminate a batch with just the right stuff at just the right time to cause an infection that would destroy it. Probably over the years, the old timers found what worked for their brews with the climates, conditions and ingredients they had available to them, whereas, we 'modernists' are trying to re-create EVERYTHING out there, and thus, we have to re-create the climate, conditions and ingredients, where they technically don't exist, in the process.

 

[RM-MN]

If you look through the posts where infections are verified, they always seem to occur in secondary and usually in secondaries with a lot of head space. We move beers to secondaries mostly for fear that the yeast in the primary will undergo autolysis if we leave beer on it too long. That autolysis is a product of heat mostly and its due to the big conicals in major breweries where the yeast is compacted at the bottom of the conical and is still producing heat, heat that can't excape and kills the yeast that are producing it. Smaller quantities of yeast can shed their heat so they don't undergo autolysis for a long time, if ever.

 

[freisste]

If you look through the posts where infections are verified, they always seem to occur in secondary and usually in secondaries with a lot of head space. We move beers to secondaries mostly for fear that the yeast in the primary will undergo autolysis if we leave beer on it too long. That autolysis is a product of heat mostly and its due to the big conicals in major breweries where the yeast is compacted at the bottom of the conical and is still producing heat, heat that can't excape and kills the yeast that are producing it. Smaller quantities of yeast can shed their heat so they don't undergo autolysis for a long time, if ever.

Never heard that heat causes autolysis...very interesting. Do you happen to have a source?

 

[fearwig]

Well, generally heat boosts metabolism (to a point)--more accurately, lack of heat slows metabolism, as it does in the fridge or freezer--so it does stand to reason. But autolysis is just spontaneous cell death, so I think any stress can lead to that (whether you want to call it autolysis or just lysis is up for debate since I guess stressors kill yeast, rather than the yeast killing itself).

I am actually coming around to getting my beer off the yeast relatively early because I have been paying closer attention to this, sometimes force carbing a 2-liter of "fresh" beer, and then trying it again after another week on the yeast (e.g. if I don't have a keg free). I don't think that's autolysis so much as just the yeast getting a little rowdy and eating things they shouldn't because they're out of proper food, but it's still something to avoid if you can. I don't think secondary is necessary for 95% of beers, better just to get it off the yeast as soon as it's done cleaning up.

 

[The_Glue]

I have a beer with an outstanding amount of zero minute hops sitting in the fermenter right now.
Will the impact of those hops fade if i keep the beer in the fermenter for 4 weeks instead of 2 weeks?
Or this is only an issue with dry hopping?

 

[fearwig]

Hop aroma fades over time, generally. 4 weeks should still be quite fresh IMO but it's a matter of perception. It'll fade in the keg/bottle too, so again it just comes down to "is it ready?" and if so drink up.