- Joined
- Feb 16, 2012
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- Reaction score
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- Location
- Either in the brewery or on the road
Thursday I brewed a Blonde Ale based on Biermuncher's popular recipe. Easy peasy session beer, lookin' forward to having a replacement light beer in the kegerator. Everything went smoothly except for the yeast I'd planned to use from a previous batch (mold had formed on it), so my "ranched" Nottingham was subbed with two 11 gram sachets of dry Lallemand Notty I had stashed away in the beer fridge. Due to an issue with the mash, my O.G. came out 3 points under my planned gravity. No problem. My 4.2ish ABV would end up around 4.1%.
Wort got chilled slightly below the planned fermenting temperature of 61F, in accordance with Scott Janish's preferred fermentation profile. Six gallons of prime 1.037 wort and 22 grams of Notty got sealed up in the conical, temperature set to free-rise to 61F. Time to go to bed and dream sweet visions of carbon dioxide bubbles dancing through my beer. But in the morning I awoke to a surprise. Instead of a healthy stream of bubbles I beheld a flaccid blow-off line of bupkus. Nada. Zero. No. Ac. Tivity.
The temperature hadn't yet reached 61F, so I thought I'd take steps to 'encourage' yeast propagation; i.e., bring on the heat. The next Janish step after 1 day at 61F is to raise it to 65F for 4 days. I decided an early start was in order and acted accordingly. Twenty-four hours later, still nothin' happening in the blow-off jar of StarSan. So I went for the Day 5 temperature setting of 69-70F. After all, esters are preferable to infection. Later in the day I ventured down to the brewery and was rewarded with the reassuring "thump, thump, thump" of greenhouse gasses escaping the confines of their stainless steel prison. Ecstatic with this development, I decided the proper course of action was to reduce the temperature back to the regularly scheduled 65F. Imagine the disappointment the next morning when the bubbling had ceased. Beer hubris. Drastic measures were required to bring this Frankenstein's creation back to life. I had about 300ml of Imperial A09 harvested from a fermentation a few weeks earlier. OK, so it's Windsor and not Nottingham. But these are desperate times! Decant and dump! Roust with several blasts of CO2 into the conical.
Alas. A day and a half later, no bubbles. Crestfallen in defeat, unable to resurrect the fermentation, I swallow my pride to assess just how bad this failed session was by taking a sample. It looks like it's clearing, smells a little sulphuric, actually doesn't taste awful, and the gravity is 1.005!!! Fermentation is DONE! Not only that, it was likely "done" after 2½ days of fermentation. I never had the time to do a Fast Ferment Test. I never got a spunding valve on the tank. The temperature never got above 69F, and was only there for less than a day. It remains to be seen how the taste will be after it conditions. This is by far the shortest time I've experienced a fermentation, especially since it was pitched cold and allowed to free-rise to fermentation temperature, only produced visible bubbling briefly, and had an overall average temperature of less than 65F. The pitch rate was at least 2x, probably closer to 3x or greater than normal without every displaying what would be considered a vigorous or exuberant fermentation. Hopefully the sulphur smell will diminish and any off-flavors or aromas will get cleaned up by the copious volume of yeast cells. It's conditioning now at 69F, and less than 4 days ago it was just sweet wort and refrigerated yeast.
Man, ain't chemistry amazing?
Wort got chilled slightly below the planned fermenting temperature of 61F, in accordance with Scott Janish's preferred fermentation profile. Six gallons of prime 1.037 wort and 22 grams of Notty got sealed up in the conical, temperature set to free-rise to 61F. Time to go to bed and dream sweet visions of carbon dioxide bubbles dancing through my beer. But in the morning I awoke to a surprise. Instead of a healthy stream of bubbles I beheld a flaccid blow-off line of bupkus. Nada. Zero. No. Ac. Tivity.
The temperature hadn't yet reached 61F, so I thought I'd take steps to 'encourage' yeast propagation; i.e., bring on the heat. The next Janish step after 1 day at 61F is to raise it to 65F for 4 days. I decided an early start was in order and acted accordingly. Twenty-four hours later, still nothin' happening in the blow-off jar of StarSan. So I went for the Day 5 temperature setting of 69-70F. After all, esters are preferable to infection. Later in the day I ventured down to the brewery and was rewarded with the reassuring "thump, thump, thump" of greenhouse gasses escaping the confines of their stainless steel prison. Ecstatic with this development, I decided the proper course of action was to reduce the temperature back to the regularly scheduled 65F. Imagine the disappointment the next morning when the bubbling had ceased. Beer hubris. Drastic measures were required to bring this Frankenstein's creation back to life. I had about 300ml of Imperial A09 harvested from a fermentation a few weeks earlier. OK, so it's Windsor and not Nottingham. But these are desperate times! Decant and dump! Roust with several blasts of CO2 into the conical.
Alas. A day and a half later, no bubbles. Crestfallen in defeat, unable to resurrect the fermentation, I swallow my pride to assess just how bad this failed session was by taking a sample. It looks like it's clearing, smells a little sulphuric, actually doesn't taste awful, and the gravity is 1.005!!! Fermentation is DONE! Not only that, it was likely "done" after 2½ days of fermentation. I never had the time to do a Fast Ferment Test. I never got a spunding valve on the tank. The temperature never got above 69F, and was only there for less than a day. It remains to be seen how the taste will be after it conditions. This is by far the shortest time I've experienced a fermentation, especially since it was pitched cold and allowed to free-rise to fermentation temperature, only produced visible bubbling briefly, and had an overall average temperature of less than 65F. The pitch rate was at least 2x, probably closer to 3x or greater than normal without every displaying what would be considered a vigorous or exuberant fermentation. Hopefully the sulphur smell will diminish and any off-flavors or aromas will get cleaned up by the copious volume of yeast cells. It's conditioning now at 69F, and less than 4 days ago it was just sweet wort and refrigerated yeast.
Man, ain't chemistry amazing?
