Questions after first brew day

[jaaron91]

It's hard not to love smelling like hops after completing your first batch of brew. It was a hot day and I was exhausted after, but that was a ton of fun and I cant wait to make the next batch.

It was a mostly speed bump-free brewing session, with the exception of having to change propane cylinders during the boil, though that only took a couple minutes.

Questions on technique: Once we racked the wort to one of our carboys we let it sit for an hour so all the trub could settle to the bottom, and then we reracked to the carboy we were fermenting in so the beer wouldn't be sitting on all that gunk while the yeast is doing its thing. Do many people employ this technique? I figured it would be a good idea since from what I understand the trub isn't helping at all with flavor, and even hurting it to a degree.

Aeration: My dad was skeptical when I told him that we needed to aerate before putting it in out fermentation chamber, and I couldn't tell him much more than I had read it in a few places. Is it important to aerate the wort, and how do most people do it? Before or after pitching the yeast?

Thanks in advance for any answers. I have lots of books I plan on reading in the near future on brewing, but nothing can replace peoples own experiences!

Cheers

 

[ludomonster]

If you're aerating by shaking, you can do it in the fermenter.

 

[stratslinger]

Glad your first brewday went well!

First off, transferring off the trub like you did was unnecessary, and actually is introducing slightly more risk to the process - since you're now transferring an extra time, that's one more time that you _could_ introduce infection and such via your siphon, tubing, or the other carboy. But as long as your sanitation was good, you're probably OK on that count. But no worries about that trub - leaving it in your fermenter is not going to hurt anything and, to the contrary, there are actually some proteins in there that, in some cases, can be somewhat beneficial to the certain stages of the yeasts' lifecycle.

On the question of aeration, yes that is absolutely essential. Yeast, in the first phase of their life cycle, are aerobic organisms. They chew through oxygen while they're reproducing to get to the right concentration in your wort, prior to actually starting to ferment it. Aeration helps to get that extra oxygen into the wort that the yeast need in this phase of their life. But you want to avoid any additional aeration after this initial aeration, as once the yeast chew through all that oxygen, any additional oxygen can lead to oxidation of your beer. And it really doesn't matter if you shake it up (or use an aeration stone) immediately before or immediately after you pitch your yeast - either way, you just want to get that extra oxygen in there at roughly the same time as the yeast get in there.

 

[duboman]

There was really no need to rack back and forth as the trub will not really do anything to flavor of the beer. Most people will just dump it all in and it will settle out itself as it ferments. Aeration is very important because yeast need oxygen to grow and ferment so the more you can aerate the better off you'll be

Glad you had fun, the beer will be great, pay attention to your fermentation temps!

 

[RmikeVT]

Jaaron91,

Aeration is necessary, here is an article from Palmer on Aeration vs. Oxidation from his How to Brew Chapter on yeast (http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter6-9-3.html
). You probably aerated the wort a good bit moving it from the Kettle to container 1 and then from container 1 to container 2.

From what I've read on this forum people have all kinds of different practices when it comes to getting rid of the trub. I use 1/2 a whirfloc tablet and pour my beer through a 5 gal sanitized paint strainer bag and it filters out the majority of trub and hop particles. The strainer bag fits perfectly around my ale pale fermentation bucket. I think my main concern are the hop particles, I like to get those out of the wort -- I haven't noticed any negative results from leaving the protein trub, and have read on this forum that there might be some benefits to the yeast (although I haven't seen any science). Sometimes when I am in a hurry I just dump it in the bucket, aerate pitch my yeast and let it go.

 

[jsv1204]

Aeration = necessary for proper yeast propagation (but it's been said already!)

Trub = I would skip all the racking: too much handling is risky. After boil, stir the wort in the brew kettle to create a whirlpool effect then cool with minimal agitation (again, in the brew kettle). It should have had plenty of time for trub to settle. My kettle (alum turkey fryer) has a spigot about 1.5" from the bottom of kettle. After settling out, I get very little trub and what does come out is easy caught with a clean and sanitized strainer. If you pour from your kettle, do so carefully and leave as much trub as possible behind.