Time to Settle Down?

[whovous]

This is my first brew using a fridge and controller to regulate fermentation temps. My FV is an amber BrewDemon, so between the lack of light and the color of the vessel, I have not been able to see all that much until now.

Perhaps equally important, this is also the first time I followed tips suggesting I could get more hop flavor if I just stopped using those pesky mesh bags and threw the hop pellets straight into the 2.5 gallon boil. This APA included a total of about 1.75 ounces of hops (warrior, citra, mosaic) at various points during the boil (mostly late) and another two ounces (citra/mosaic) in a hop burst. This somewhat clogged the bazooka screen in my recirculating system.

It has been just over ten days since I oxygenated and pitched US-05. Fermentation was vigorous but controlled thanks to ambient fridge temps of 62F for the first four days. I hit my target gravity of 1.07, but today I got 1.018 instead of the projected 1.013. How will this affect the flavor of the brew?

Tonight is dryhop night, so I put 2oz of Citra and 1 oz of Mosaic into a mesh bag with some weights, unscrewed the lid, and dropped them in.

Here is what I saw. First two pics. Is that still a ton of hop crud floating after ten days? When and how do I make it settle? As the third pic shows (if you look carefully), I seem to already have so much crud in the bottom that it will not settle below the spigot in the cone. I think it is the same crud, and I got that much just by filling the sample vessel. How the heck am I going to clear this enough to bottle, and am I going to need to just forget about the spigot this time and draw from the top instead?

 

[jwalk4]

Wow, I've never seen a brew Demon before. Looks like a cool take on a conical.

I would say to take your FV to a warmer spot and see if it doesn't reawaken the yeast into dropping a few more points. Primary fermentation is over so the risk of off flavors are low.

As for outside of the hop cone(?) it looks like yeast rafts. So proceed as normal. What is your sanitation techniques on your hop bags and weights?

 

[jwalk4]

For the record, I went back to using hop bag (s) because they were way easier clean than a clogged bazooka screen.

 

[Sammy86]

IMO 10 days is not enough time for things to clear up. I let all my brews sit in primary for 21 days and everything clears up nicely and drops the way it should.

One way to get things to settle is to cold crash the beer. Bring it down to around 45-50 degrees and then you can go colder if you like and bam everything should have dropped like its supposed to

 

[whovous]

Current chamber temp is 70F. Fridge is in a very hot garage, so ramping it up is no problem.

Should I:
1. Leave it where it is for now?
2. Ramp it up? Or,
3. Cold crash it?

Sounds like patience is a virtue. My original hope was that I could bottle and bottle condition before leaving the country on 20 August, and then cold condition the ten days I am gone. I guess now my main goal should be to simply get this batch bottled.

Is this ever going to settle far enough to be able to use the spigot, or should I plan on pumping from the top? That will waste a lot of wort, I think.

To answer the question, I boiled the bag and the bolts for several minutes before adding the hops. Washed my hands with disinfectant soap.

 

[jwalk4]

An OG of 1.07 is pretty high for a 10 day grain to bottle time, but at 70 degrees the yeasties are probably done so 1.018 is what you get. Contrary to my earlier advice, I wouldn't ramp it up (I was thinking that you might have had it at low 60s or something).

I would follow Sammy's advice and wait, then cold crash for conditioning and clarity.

I can't believe you have that much hop crud AND you're using bags. Yet, it doesn't look like its infected. Did you jostle the FV at all to kick the trub back into suspension?

 

[whovous]

To be clear (so to speak), I started at 62F and ramped up slowly, and have been at 70F for a day or two.

And I used a hop bag only for the dry hop I started last night. I used a total of 3.75 oz of pellets without hop bags in what turned out to be a little more than two gallons of wort.

I will give it a jostle before leaving this AM. I will leave it at 70F for a while. Not decided on just how long, but I am gone for the weekend in any case, and the dry hop has just started, so I am unlikely to pull the hops and crash before Tuesday or Wednesday at the earliest. Now that I've decided there is no way I can be ready to put bottles in to cold condition when I leave for vacation on 20 August, I guess there is no particular rush, and that patience is, once again, a virtue.

 

[fuelish]

I've found the easiest way to get things to clear is, as noted above, give it more time to settle out.....the easiest (but not the cheapest) way is to have multiple batches in the pipeline, all at different stages in the ferment process, this way you're not dwelling on/possibly rushing any one particular batch......this kinda carries over to my meadmaking, as mead needs a LOT of time, generally.....making it is not for the impatient, and the switch from beerbrewer to meadmaker takes some getting used to, to say the least... but it's incredibly good stuff

 

[joshesmusica]

Wait a couple days, then take another gravity test. If it hasn't moved at all, then go ahead and cold crash it. Look up using gelatin, it's super east and works really well. Basically you drop it below 45f, prolly take around 24 hrs. Then add your gelatin (look up how that is done), then wait another 48 hrs. Your beer will be super clear at that point.
If you don't want to use gelatin you could just cold crash it for a week, and it should work just as well.
Also in the future, you should just skip the hop bag in the fermenter as well.

 

[whovous]

I think it will be all hop bags all the time for me from here on. This is just too much of a mess, and I am really concerned about winding up with trub above the spigot line in the conical. I thought that was close to impossible, but now I am not so sure. Maybe once things really settle and the trub compacts the problem will take care of itself, but I am concerned for now at least.

I took jwalk4's advice and gave it a good jostle en route to the car this AM. Dunno how much an instant reaction is worth for such things, but my instant reaction was that a fair amount of that crud fell below the surface. I will leave things at 70F at least for the weekend while I am away, and will play it by ear from there. Now that I've jettisoned my plan to begin cold conditioning the eventual bottles by the time I leave on the 20th, I guess there is no rush at all. I already have the gelatin for the crash.

Multiple batches in the pipeline? Oh, I'm trying, I'm trying. Finding the time is the problem. I will spend roughly four weeks in London and Prague this summer (I know, I lead a rough life!), and it really throws off my planning. Maybe I can find a way to pitch another batch just before I leave again and let my Fermostat manage temps from there.

 

[joshesmusica]

Did you use whole cone or pellet hops? To me that stuff looks like something from the yeast and not hop matter. Does your conical not have a way to take the yeast from the bottom? This would certainly take care of the concern about the spigot.
I would just personally be concerned about the risk of contamination with the bag. But I guess if it's nylon there's less of a risk.

 

[whovous]

I used pellets at a rate of roughly two ounces per gallon. I am very much a beginner and so assumed it had to be the hops because I put in many times more hops than yeast. Now that I think about just what it is that yeast does, I think you are right and that it is yeast and not hops floating there. The trub at the bottom of the third picture is another matter, but probably not an important one.

My BrewDemon conical is very clever and very cheap, but it is not really a very advanced design. It has no way to take the yeast from the bottom. I think it is possible to modify it to do so, but I've never looked into that possibility to any real extent.

Lotsa people use bags, and many more do not. I've not heard of anyone attributing contamination to a bag. That doesn't mean I cannot be the first!

 

[joshesmusica]

I've seen quite a few contaminations because of dry hop bags. Enough to sway me away from doing it. Then again I use buckets fermenters and always rack to a bottling bucket.

If it's been in the fermenter for this long, and your dry hops are in a bag, it's very unlikely that the hops from the boil would still be floating. So my vote is that it's something to do with the yeast.

 

[whovous]

Yup. Gotta be the yeast. On top of everything else that points to yeast, the pellets were green. The two pics are first without flash and then with flash, and neither one bears any resemblance to green.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Looks like one helluva cold break to me.

 

[whovous]

I guess it does look like that. This batch had very little hot or cold side break, FWIW.

 

[whovous]

Time for an update - I said that on Friday morning I gave the FV a good shake, and that it looked like that was causing some of the crud to settle. However, when I got back on Friday afternoon, there appeared to be as much krausen (or whatever) as ever before. I took some more pics before leaving for the weekend, but no matter now.

I just got back and checked again. The good news is that crud has now completely settled.

The bad news is that after I unscrewed the large top on Friday afternoon, I left the top on top of the fridge for the rest of the weekend. The wort/beer has sat uncovered in the fridge at 70F for roughly 48 hours.

1. What is my risk of infection?
2. Of wild yeast?
3. Other than screwing the top back on, should I do anything else?
4. What about my dry hops? They were added for aroma, obviously, and that aroma has had 48 hours to dissipate in the FC. Should I pull em and pitch some more?
5. When am I going to stop doing idiotic things?

Thanks!

 

[joshesmusica]

Time for an update - I said that on Friday morning I gave the FV a good shake, and that it looked like that was causing some of the crud to settle. However, when I got back on Friday afternoon, there appeared to be as much krausen (or whatever) as ever before. I took some more pics before leaving for the weekend, but no matter now.

I just got back and checked again. The good news is that crud has now completely settled.

The bad news is that after I unscrewed the large top on Friday afternoon, I left the top on top of the fridge for the rest of the weekend. The wort/beer has sat uncovered in the fridge at 70F for roughly 48 hours.

1. What is my risk of infection?
2. Of wild yeast?
3. Other than screwing the top back on, should I do anything else?
4. What about my dry hops? They were added for aroma, obviously, and that aroma has had 48 hours to dissipate in the FC. Should I pull em and pitch some more?
5. When am I going to stop doing idiotic things?

Thanks!

1/2. depends on your sanitation inside the fridge. but there's plenty of hops in there, and i'm sure you're at FG now, so the environment in the beer should be pretty hostile to the nasty creatures. but still possible i suppose.

3. if it's time to cold crash, i'd start working on that. that should make the environment even more harsh for the outsiders.

4. i'm not sure how volatile the aroma particles are at that temp. but i suppose it never hurts to add more dry hops does it?

5. eventually. or then again, possibly never if you're not really a pay attention to the details type of guy. plus that whole fact that you're likely human, and therefore will continue to make mistakes your entire life.

 

[aprichman]

I wouldn't worry too much about losing aromatics if you dry hopped 2.5 gallons of beer with 3oz of hops. That's a pretty heady hop:beer ratio

 

[whovous]

Thanks all. I am going to treat this like nothing happened and continue apace.