tlacualchiuhqui
Member
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2014
- Messages
- 5
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- 2
Yesterday, I finally found time to brew a couple of beers I'd wanted to make for a long time: two classic light lagers, one brewed with rice and the other with corn.
This was my first time brewing two beers on the same day, and I pulled it off, in just eight hours or so... I know light lager is an unforgiving style, so I was meticulous about sanitation, mash and sparge temperatures, and gravity. Then, I made two big mistakes.
First, I was rushing to finish the first beer and move on to the second, so I only chilled it to about ninety degrees before transferring it to a carboy, and pitched after it had been sitting for about an hour. (I'm used to brewing in cooler temperatures.) Then, rushing to finish the project, I did the same with the second. Our air conditioning isn't working, so the house is about eighty-five degrees, and I realized a couple of hours later, when I decided to check the wort temperature with a sanitzed thermometer, that neither had cooled much below that.
That was moment of panic number one. Then, number two, I woke up this morning to find that my temperature controller wasn't working properly, and the lagers had been sitting in my kegerator at temperatures in the sixties and seventies all night. That's not the end of the world, I guess, but it can't help, when I was aiming for fifty-five. They were fermenting vigorously.
I finally have them down to fifty-five degrees, less than twenty-four hours later, but they've been through a lot in the past day. Will they survive? Will they be wrecked by fusels and esters? I will not make this mistake again. I know the only way to find out is to wait and see, but I'm not sure I want these beers taking up all the space in the kegerator for the next month or longer if there's a good chance they aren't going to be good.
TL;DR: I pitched my lager yeast into eighty-to-ninety-degree wort, and then the beer sat overnight at temperatures in the sixties and seventies. I have it down to fifty-five now, but I think I might be screwed, and I'm trying to decide what to do next.
This was my first time brewing two beers on the same day, and I pulled it off, in just eight hours or so... I know light lager is an unforgiving style, so I was meticulous about sanitation, mash and sparge temperatures, and gravity. Then, I made two big mistakes.
First, I was rushing to finish the first beer and move on to the second, so I only chilled it to about ninety degrees before transferring it to a carboy, and pitched after it had been sitting for about an hour. (I'm used to brewing in cooler temperatures.) Then, rushing to finish the project, I did the same with the second. Our air conditioning isn't working, so the house is about eighty-five degrees, and I realized a couple of hours later, when I decided to check the wort temperature with a sanitzed thermometer, that neither had cooled much below that.
That was moment of panic number one. Then, number two, I woke up this morning to find that my temperature controller wasn't working properly, and the lagers had been sitting in my kegerator at temperatures in the sixties and seventies all night. That's not the end of the world, I guess, but it can't help, when I was aiming for fifty-five. They were fermenting vigorously.
I finally have them down to fifty-five degrees, less than twenty-four hours later, but they've been through a lot in the past day. Will they survive? Will they be wrecked by fusels and esters? I will not make this mistake again. I know the only way to find out is to wait and see, but I'm not sure I want these beers taking up all the space in the kegerator for the next month or longer if there's a good chance they aren't going to be good.
TL;DR: I pitched my lager yeast into eighty-to-ninety-degree wort, and then the beer sat overnight at temperatures in the sixties and seventies. I have it down to fifty-five now, but I think I might be screwed, and I'm trying to decide what to do next.