Fast and Warm Fermintation

[Panthro63]

Hey guys,
I know there are some other posts about this out there, but there's one thing I wanted some clarity about.

I brewed an All-Grain Porter from NB, which will become a bourbon barrel porter in secondary. OG: 1.049 (low, I know...damnit, was aiming for 1.065)

I did a yeast starter with Scotch Ale yeast. All was good.
Before pitching, my fermenter wouldn't dip below 75 after about 6 hours, tried cooling w/ wet towels, ice, still kept hovering. At 7 hours, I gave in and added the yeast as I became nervous it could get infected sitting that long and it was late.

The fermentation was vigorous for the first two days, temp stayed around 74 - now on day 3, the krausen is thin and not much action. The temp also has finally fallen down to 68.

I know the heat quickened the process, but I'm wondering:
Should I leave the primary alone an extra week (2 weeks total) to help clean up any off-flavors the warmth may have caused? Or will a long sit in the secondary (4 weeks is the plan) with the oak chips and bourbon be a solve?

Thanks for any insight!

 

[specharka]

Hey guys,
I know there are some other posts about this out there, but there's one thing I wanted some clarity about.

I brewed an All-Grain Porter from NB, which will become a bourbon barrel porter in secondary. OG: 1.044 (low, I know...damnit, was aiming for 1.065)

I did a yeast starter with Scotch Ale yeast. All was good.
Before pitching, my fermenter wouldn't dip below 75 after about 6 hours, tried cooling w/ wet towels, ice, still kept hovering. At 7 hours, I gave in and added the yeast as I became nervous it could get infected sitting that long and it was late.

The fermentation was vigorous for the first two days, temp stayed around 74 - now on day 3, the krausen is thin and not much action. The temp also has finally fallen down to 68.

I know the heat quickened the process, but I'm wondering:
Should I leave the primary alone an extra week (2 weeks total) to help clean up any off-flavors the warmth may have caused? Or will a long sit in the secondary (4 weeks is the plan) with the oak chips and bourbon be a solve?

Thanks for any insight!

Couple things here...

If you undershot your gravity by that much, something went very wrong with your mashing and lautering process. Take a look at John Palmer's How to Brew and see if there was something you missed.

5 gallons is a lot of thermal mass, with a very high specific heat. A swamp cooler isn't going to do much to reduce your temperature...you need a fermentation chamber, like a chest freezer or spare refrigerator.

Fusel alcohol flavors do not improve with time...they are one of the few off-flavors that do not diminish with age. That being said, 74 F is not completely out-of-bounds for most ale yeast; you will likely see more fruity esters, but that can be masked with the oak and bourbon additions.

Two weeks in primary. Minimum. There are other off-flavors like acetyldehyde that can be addressed with longer conditioning time in primary. Secondary time is used to impart other flavors, allow the beer to mature, and refine beer clarity.

 

[Panthro63]

Couple things here...

If you undershot your gravity by that much, something went very wrong with your mashing and lautering process. Take a look at John Palmer's How to Brew and see if there was something you missed.

5 gallons is a lot of thermal mass, with a very high specific heat. A swamp cooler isn't going to do much to reduce your temperature...you need a fermentation chamber, like a chest freezer or spare refrigerator.

Fusel alcohol flavors do not improve with time...they are one of the few off-flavors that do not diminish with age. That being said, 74 F is not completely out-of-bounds for most ale yeast; you will likely see more fruity esters, but that can be masked with the oak and bourbon additions.

Two weeks in primary. Minimum. There are other off-flavors like acetyldehyde that can be addressed with longer conditioning time in primary. Secondary time is used to impart other flavors, allow the beer to mature, and refine beer clarity.

Thanks for the feedback (also realize I misspelled Fermenter in the title, duh)
I had an experienced brewer with me that day, and he was baffled as well as to the gravity - we realized it pre-boil, so we added a little DME and late sparge to the boil to help raise things up.

I'll definitely go 2-3 weeks on the primary.

 

[CoreyG]

You had 1.049 even though you added dme? That seems very low. I was initially gonna to ask if you had corrected your hydrometer reading for temp when you took your per boil measurement but if your cooled OG post boil read 1.049 something definitely went wrong

 

[Panthro63]

You had 1.049 even though you added dme? That seems very low. I was initially gonna to ask if you had corrected your hydrometer reading for temp when you took your per boil measurement but if your cooled OG post boil read 1.049 something definitely went wrong

Yep, baffled. Here are more details:
* 12.5 lbs crushed gains from NB
* Mashed at 152 (4.2 gallons) for an hour in a kettle. Slowly dropped to like 148 near the end.
* Fly Sparged 5.4 gallons at 170.
* Only mis-step was not recirculating the first draws
* Added just under a 1lb of DME to boil. (All I had on hand)
* Filled fermenter to about 5.25
* After boil, had an extra gallon leftover in the boil pot.

 

[muels]

It's seems there was other problems too but having an extra gallon left in the boil kettle is a big issue. You could have boiled off that other gallon and improved you gravity to around 1.056. 1 lb of DME is about 9 points for 5 gallons so your real gravity from the mash was 1.040. That's 25 points off.

What do you mean by you added DME and "late sparge"?

 

[Panthro63]

It's seems there was other problems too but having an extra gallon left in the boil kettle is a big issue. You could have boiled off that other gallon and improved you gravity to around 1.056. 1 lb of DME is about 9 points for 5 gallons so your real gravity from the mash was 1.040. That's 25 points off.

What do you mean by you added DME and "late sparge"?

Was wanting to boil longer as well, but my brew friend advised against it because the recipe used Chinook hops.

The late sparge - there was still a little bit (like a third of a gallon) of water left in the mash tun after sparging. We drained that off and added to the boil, about 20 min in. Kind of a, "Yeah, that gravity sucked, what else can we do?" moment.

 

[specharka]

Was wanting to boil longer as well, but my brew friend advised against it because the recipe used Chinook hops.

The late sparge - there was still a little bit (like a third of a gallon) of water left in the mash tun after sparging. We drained that off and added to the boil, about 20 min in. Kind of a, "Yeah, that gravity sucked, what else can we do?" moment.

???

Boil first, add hops later. Your hands aren't tied to the boil schedule. An extended boil is often a necessity to make up for mash tun inefficiencies, and has a negligible impact on color and final gravity for a full volume boil.

 

[Panthro63]

???

Boil first, add hops later. Your hands aren't tied to the boil schedule. An extended boil is often a necessity to make up for mash tun inefficiencies, and has a negligible impact on color and final gravity for a full volume boil.

You're right - I should've boiled extra time after taking the pre-boil gravity, and before adding the hops.

Will definitely keep this in mind next go-round.

 

[CoreyG]

Ya I definetly agree that most of your low OG issue is coming from the extra "lost beer'. You might have some efficiency issues but that extra gallon would have pushed you close to 1.060.... Always keep in my when boiling what your normal boil off rate is. I'll normally boil off 1.5 gallons per hour so I always aim to have 1.5 gallons more than my target final gravity or I'll have to boil longer