nylonoxygen77
Member
Hi there! I am a new extract home brewer, started this year. I am on my fifth batch. This post is about my last batch, which is a Honey Brown ale. The recipe is from iBrewmaster, which is an excellent app. Here's the recipe, slightly modified from their recipe.
5 gallon batch
specialty grains
0.25 lbs Chocolate malt
0.25 lbs special b
0.25 lbs biscuit
0.25 lbs special roast
fermentables
7 lbs Gold Malt syrup
2 lbs Honey
hops
1.0 oz cluster 60 min
0.5 oz fuggles 0 min
yeast
Wyeast 1056 American Ale (yeast cake from prior batch)
carbonation
primed with 8 oz raw honey
OG: 1.072
FG: 1.009
fermentation temperature: fluctuated from 75-85 during primary, secondary, and bottling
Ok, so the yeast was taken from the cake of my previous batch, another from iBrewmaster, Goldenflower Ale. That was a 5.7% ale, lower grav than this honey brown. I made a starter for the honey brown and it went very well. The ferment was fast and vigorous. I didn't have any problems that I was aware of. I had a little bit of a hard time figuring which priming sugar to use, I wanted a honey flavor in the end result, so I went with a dark raw honey (i've since learned that it's not best to rely on priming for imparting flavors). After looking at various calculators and scouring these forums I decided to go with 8 oz.
Primary, secondary, and bottling all took place in my basement, which fluctuates in temperature between 75 and 85. I got absolutely no carbonation after three weeks in the bottles. I figured my yeast had probably died because of the temperature. So last weekend i opened all the bottles and sprinkled a few grains of dry yeast in each bottle and moved the cases into an air-conditioned room, keeping the temp around 70-75. It's been there for a week. So far I've tried one and I've observed very little carbonation. I did get a bit of a release of c02 when the bottle was uncapped, more than before I re-yeasted them. So I'm not terribly worried. It tastes really good, just not carbed.
Here's the weird bit. I saved the yeast cake from this batch, and it was in a soda bottle in my refrigerator. I did not wash it, and there was some beer on top of the yeast in the bottle. I was moving some things around in the fridge and discovered that the bottle for the Honey Brown was rock hard. I decided to vent it a little to release some pressure. The contents were expanding rapidly, and co2 was rising from the yeast cake under the leftover beer. I decided to go for it and just open the bottle. It practically exploded all over my sink, vomiting frothy yeast sludge for nearly 30 seconds. I wasn't able to save any of it, by the time it was done belching co2 and yeast, there was really nothing left in the bottle. I couldn't believe that all that came out of that bottle that's been in my fridge for almost a month. So i guess that proves my yeast-dying theory wrong...
So what happened here? Did I have stalled fermentation? It seems like the yeast dropped out of suspension in the primary and didn't make it to the secondary or something... Why did all that co2 end up in the yeast cake that I saved and not in the bottles? Thanks so much for reading.
5 gallon batch
specialty grains
0.25 lbs Chocolate malt
0.25 lbs special b
0.25 lbs biscuit
0.25 lbs special roast
fermentables
7 lbs Gold Malt syrup
2 lbs Honey
hops
1.0 oz cluster 60 min
0.5 oz fuggles 0 min
yeast
Wyeast 1056 American Ale (yeast cake from prior batch)
carbonation
primed with 8 oz raw honey
OG: 1.072
FG: 1.009
fermentation temperature: fluctuated from 75-85 during primary, secondary, and bottling
Ok, so the yeast was taken from the cake of my previous batch, another from iBrewmaster, Goldenflower Ale. That was a 5.7% ale, lower grav than this honey brown. I made a starter for the honey brown and it went very well. The ferment was fast and vigorous. I didn't have any problems that I was aware of. I had a little bit of a hard time figuring which priming sugar to use, I wanted a honey flavor in the end result, so I went with a dark raw honey (i've since learned that it's not best to rely on priming for imparting flavors). After looking at various calculators and scouring these forums I decided to go with 8 oz.
Primary, secondary, and bottling all took place in my basement, which fluctuates in temperature between 75 and 85. I got absolutely no carbonation after three weeks in the bottles. I figured my yeast had probably died because of the temperature. So last weekend i opened all the bottles and sprinkled a few grains of dry yeast in each bottle and moved the cases into an air-conditioned room, keeping the temp around 70-75. It's been there for a week. So far I've tried one and I've observed very little carbonation. I did get a bit of a release of c02 when the bottle was uncapped, more than before I re-yeasted them. So I'm not terribly worried. It tastes really good, just not carbed.
Here's the weird bit. I saved the yeast cake from this batch, and it was in a soda bottle in my refrigerator. I did not wash it, and there was some beer on top of the yeast in the bottle. I was moving some things around in the fridge and discovered that the bottle for the Honey Brown was rock hard. I decided to vent it a little to release some pressure. The contents were expanding rapidly, and co2 was rising from the yeast cake under the leftover beer. I decided to go for it and just open the bottle. It practically exploded all over my sink, vomiting frothy yeast sludge for nearly 30 seconds. I wasn't able to save any of it, by the time it was done belching co2 and yeast, there was really nothing left in the bottle. I couldn't believe that all that came out of that bottle that's been in my fridge for almost a month. So i guess that proves my yeast-dying theory wrong...
So what happened here? Did I have stalled fermentation? It seems like the yeast dropped out of suspension in the primary and didn't make it to the secondary or something... Why did all that co2 end up in the yeast cake that I saved and not in the bottles? Thanks so much for reading.