dragonlor20
Well-Known Member
So looking for a bit of feedback on this beer...
I have a Scottish Ale that I am pretty sure I just crippled. The beer had been fermenting about 10 days and was at 1.030 at 5 days, at 9 days it had moved to 1.027. I went ahead and transferred it to a secondary. My reason for doing this was that I had used a secondary fermenter (small) as my primary fermenter because my primary bucket was in use with another beer and my primary glass had an infection a while back and I have been scittish about using it...
Allow me to grab a beer and finish the story... Ok, homebrew in hand, I will continue...
Anyhow, because I had 5 gallons of beer with no headspace in a 1.050 brew, I had some blowoff - so I switched to a blowoff tube. Well, when fermentation slowed a bit, I replaced with a clean airlock - more blowoff. I went back to the blowoff tube. The beer continued to ferment slowly, but the fermenter was nasty at this point and I just became more and more uncomfortable with the shape of the fermenter and finally transferred it over to a new 5 gallon glass fermenter.
After transferring, I noticed a lot of very flocculant yeast were left behind. There was yeast clinging to the walls of the soiled fermenter. I am afraid I left most of the good yeast behind in the first fermenter. Airlock activity has slowed significantly and the beer is low enough in the fermenter now that my turkey baster is really having trouble grabbing enough wort for a sample. I could buy a wine thief, but I would love to not have to... My instinct is to repitch and allow the yeast to just catch up and ferment the 1.027 beer down to its target 1.016, but what do you guys think?
By the way: For those considering buying those fancy glass fermentation kits, save yourself the trouble - I love my buckets.
I have a Scottish Ale that I am pretty sure I just crippled. The beer had been fermenting about 10 days and was at 1.030 at 5 days, at 9 days it had moved to 1.027. I went ahead and transferred it to a secondary. My reason for doing this was that I had used a secondary fermenter (small) as my primary fermenter because my primary bucket was in use with another beer and my primary glass had an infection a while back and I have been scittish about using it...
Allow me to grab a beer and finish the story... Ok, homebrew in hand, I will continue...
Anyhow, because I had 5 gallons of beer with no headspace in a 1.050 brew, I had some blowoff - so I switched to a blowoff tube. Well, when fermentation slowed a bit, I replaced with a clean airlock - more blowoff. I went back to the blowoff tube. The beer continued to ferment slowly, but the fermenter was nasty at this point and I just became more and more uncomfortable with the shape of the fermenter and finally transferred it over to a new 5 gallon glass fermenter.
After transferring, I noticed a lot of very flocculant yeast were left behind. There was yeast clinging to the walls of the soiled fermenter. I am afraid I left most of the good yeast behind in the first fermenter. Airlock activity has slowed significantly and the beer is low enough in the fermenter now that my turkey baster is really having trouble grabbing enough wort for a sample. I could buy a wine thief, but I would love to not have to... My instinct is to repitch and allow the yeast to just catch up and ferment the 1.027 beer down to its target 1.016, but what do you guys think?
By the way: For those considering buying those fancy glass fermentation kits, save yourself the trouble - I love my buckets.