What's in Your Fermenter? 2020

[Malter White]

2 hours ago, iBooz2 said:

Did you forget to add the yeast MUZ?  (I see you say you pitched at 20 C) but did you, are you sure and and what yeast was it?

My European Lager batch was away within about 18 hrs.  Dry pitched with kit yeast and 1 sachet of W-34/70 at 18C then dropped to 11.5 C.

Cheers - AL

Yep. Definitely pitched it. It was the kit yeast from the European lager tin.

[Malter White]

I've probably answered my own enquiry. Set the temperature at 20C overnight and there's a thin krausen now formed on top. Have now dropped the temp to 17C and will look at lowering it again tonight to 14C.

Oh, and it appears the SG has moved a point or two downwards. It was a little hard to read because the sample had a krausen too.

Edited May 27, 2020 by MUZZY

[Malter White]

3 hours ago, iBooz2 said:

 (I see you say you pitched at 20 C)

I think pitching temp may have been the issue. I used the thermometer strip on the FV as my reference. Pitched at 20C (apparently) but then I plonked it straight into the fridge at 14C. 
Thermo strip probably not very accurate.

[Red devil 44]

16 hours ago, Bearded Burbler said:

The Cool Brew with W34/70 has calmed down to just above 14 deg C which is good....  interesting to see the sticky-on-temp-strip being somewhat way off ; )

Anyway... think that 14 for a while will be good for this brew to keep chortling along merrily... Krausen has decreased significantly so everything is settling down now for the long haul

Have fun cleaning that FV BB

[Journeyman]

Anyone else noticed the Kraussen Effect?

When cleaning, the Kraussen remains at the back of the FV (away from the tap if your FV has tap forward in the fridge) just rinses away but the residue at the front require scrubbing?

[Otto Von Blotto]

I don't scrub mine, just soak in perc overnight and it's all gone. 

My pale ale is down to 3.9 degrees according to the inkbird, I threw in the isinglass earlier and will do the polyclar tomorrow so it's ready to keg next Thursday. 

The pilsner can have its isinglass and polyclar treatment over the weekend, gotta remember to drop it to 3 when I get home tonight. I'll probably keg it in a couple of weeks time. 

[Naughty Corner Brewing]

5 hours ago, Red devil 44 said:

Have fun cleaning that FV BB 

As Kelsey said - an overnight soak in Sodium Perc, empty and a wipe off any last crumbs with a soft cloth, rinse well and drain dry. Job done.

[Naughty Corner Brewing]

I have empty fermenters at the moment. Bottled the ESB straight from 1 degree cold crash last night and the bottles are in the ferm fridge coming back up to 20 degrees with the heat belt hanging around in there. Coming up to about 19 now, so I'll leave them in there over the weekend, then Monday I'll migrate the two boxes to the garage where they can continue their aging process.

Next brew is the ROTM Kolsch from this month which I'll put in on Monday. Planning on doing a starter for the yeast which definitely isn't needed, but I want to achieve two things. One, try out my new kit of stir plate and flasks, and two, create enough yeast to save some of it for next time as I think it'll be a brew I'll try as an all grain recipe in a few months. Is 24 hours enough for a 1l starter with a packet of dry yeast?

That leaves my next AG batch to go in 2 weeks. Thinking of the Three C's Pale Ale from Cheaky Peak - looks so nice.

[UncleStavvy]

30 minutes ago, NewBrews said:

try out my new kit of stir plate and flasks,

Where did you buy and how much?. Would like to be able to do a proper starter with the Coopers commercial yeast.

[JoeB7]

Quick question as I don't need to start a new topic, but.... I want to make the Coopers Pale Ale yeast starter but don't want to drink 6 beers or let them go flat so:

Can I collect it in the PET bottle and fridge it O/Night until I have all six stubby dregs? Obviously don't feed it up until I have it all

 

[UncleStavvy]

6 minutes ago, JoeB7 said:

Quick question as I don't need to start a new topic, but.... I want to make the Coopers Pale Ale yeast starter but don't want to drink 6 beers or let them go flat so:

Can I collect it in the PET bottle and fridge it O/Night until I have all six stubby dregs? Obviously don't feed it up until I have it all

 

Cant see how that would hurt. Make sure your PET bottle is sanitised and should be fine

[Naughty Corner Brewing]

39 minutes ago, UncleStavvy said:

Where did you buy and how much?. Would like to be able to do a proper starter with the Coopers commercial yeast.

Kegland. $49.95 for the stir plate.$11 for the 2l flask.

Ordered Monday and it was delivered Wednesday.

[JoeB7]

Yep perc washed rinsed and sani

Thanks @UncleStavvy

[Naughty Corner Brewing]

13 minutes ago, JoeB7 said:

Can I collect it in the PET bottle and fridge it O/Night until I have all six stubby dregs?

I made the "starter" and drank 3 stubbs one night and added them in, then added the other three on the second night. Worked fine.

[JoeB7]

What's a better food for it rather than sugar? I see guys use all sorts of special boosters on Utube vids

[Titan]

1 hour ago, NewBrews said:

Is 24 hours enough for a 1l starter with a packet of dry yeast?

Sure is mate.

[UncleStavvy]

26 minutes ago, JoeB7 said:

What's a better food for it rather than sugar? I see guys use all sorts of special boosters on Utube vids

Sugars cheap and simple. You could get all fancy with dry/liquid malt. Just make it per the video and it will work fine. When you harvest the trub from the brew you can try some more involved tricks

[Naughty Corner Brewing]

27 minutes ago, JoeB7 said:

What's a better food for it rather than sugar? I see guys use all sorts of special boosters on Utube vids

Malt is better if you're making a starter generally, although for the purposes of getting it going, sugar seems to work commercial yeast strain. There are multiple threads on it here.

Here's the text from the FAQ if you haven't seen it.

https://www.diybeer.com/au/faqs#FAQ_7_05

[iBooz2]

1 hour ago, JoeB7 said:

Quick question as I don't need to start a new topic, but.... I want to make the Coopers Pale Ale yeast starter but don't want to drink 6 beers or let them go flat so:

Can I collect it in the PET bottle and fridge it O/Night until I have all six stubby dregs? Obviously don't feed it up until I have it all

 

@JoeB7 I have harvested the yeast from 6 - 8 stubbies over a period of a week to 10 days without problems and yeast worked fine in batches.

What I do is spray the twist top area of the stubbies with sanitiser before opening, decant that stubbie don't drink straight from the bottle (no mouth bugs, stray yeasts) and put its original twist top back on same bottle and give it another quick spray with sanitiser then stick it in the fridge.  Over the period of the week or so end up with the 6 - 8 stubbies sitting in the fridge just with dregs.  They have stayed in my fridge like that for about 10 days in the past and no problems yet.

When drinking last stubbie, make up 1 litre of pre boiled filtered tap water and 100 g DME and mix in say a sanitised cordial bottle of about 2 litres capacity.  When temp of mix has cooled to high 20 C's tip a bit of this mix into each stubbie and swirl them around, then tip the stirred up dregs back into the cordial bottle.  Once you have collected all the dregs, put the cordial bottle in a dark warm place (say low 20 C ish) making sure lid is lose to let CO2 pressure out.

Give the cordial bottle a swirl every few hours if possible and watch it for a few days.  When you think it's done, then cold crash it for a couple of more days to separate the yeast from the un-hopped beer (which you tip most off and discard) and use the resulting yeast left to pitch into your next batch which is end of road for this starter.

OR THEN DON'T PITCH IT - MAKE MORE.

Make up another 2 litre wort of pre-boiled hot water and 200 g of DME in a bigger sanitised bottle and pitch the resulting yeast from above into it, in other words step it up.  Repeat the dark warm place and lid lose routine for another few days.  Again swirling bottle as it brews.  Then cold crash this one again for a couple of days.  Pour off most of the un-hopped beer from this 2-3 litre stepped up starter and then divide the resulting yeast into two even parts into two separate PET bottles. You now have two, one to pitch and one to make another stepped up starter out of.

This way you can pitch one of the PET's yeast and have the other ready for a second batch in a couple of weeks time OR use it like I do to start off another 2 litre plus wort starter so I can subsequently split it again further down the track.  It's what I do to stop having to buy stubbies and go through step one over and over to get a fresh yeast starter.  It gives me clean unhopped CCA yeast to use over and over.  I discard my trubs from the subsequent beer batches as they usually have a lot of hop matter in them (commando dry hop etc.).  Still could be used I know but just prefer a clean fresh yeast each batch.

Hope this makes sense.  Will see if I can do a diagram and post here later.

Cheers - AL

 

Edited May 28, 2020 by iBooz2
typos

[JoeB7]

Perfect sense @iBooz2 

Have watched so many vids on washing trub, harvesting from bottles, making a starter from dry yeast I've forgotten to just kickstart with the 'KISS' principle.

[Journeyman]

3 hours ago, JoeB7 said:

What's a better food for it rather than sugar? I see guys use all sorts of special boosters on Utube vids

I've been using LDME but I'm going back to sugar. The starters are more active sooner and so are the brews. Not by heaps - even the LDME seems a faster kick off and quicker to get into full ferment mode than either dry sprinkle or eve plain rehydrate - but enough to be noticeable. I've done maybe 6 starters with LDME and they are slow compared to the ones I was making with raw sugar.

[Otto Von Blotto]

Malt is far better for yeast starters than plain sugar. Don't do it. There's more to good fermentation than just how quickly it takes off. Mine take off slower when I inject oxygen into the wort but the fermentation itself is shorter and the beer tastes a little cleaner.

Reactivating from Coopers bottles is a different process to making a proper yeast starter so I would just do whatever Coopers suggest for that.

Edited May 28, 2020 by Otto Von Blotto

[DuffBeer]

Another question for the pro's, I've read some people give their brew a quick stir half way through fermentation to encourage any yeast that wants to activate/re-activate. I'm on day #7 of roughly 10 days I'll let the craft brew (8.5L) ferment, what do you think? Should I give it a quick stir, or just leave it be?

[Journeyman]

22 minutes ago, DuffBeer said:

Another question for the pro's, I've read some people give their brew a quick stir half way through fermentation to encourage any yeast that wants to activate/re-activate. I'm on day #7 of roughly 10 days I'll let the craft brew (8.5L) ferment, what do you think? Should I give it a quick stir, or just leave it be?

Every time you open the lid you risk your beer. If you do it, it must be a very gentle stir so you don't add oxygen.

But honestly I think any yeast in there will be active and simply stirring is not going to 'wake' anything up.

There are different stages the yeast goes through which is why you get bubbles then Kraussen, then that all gets re-eaten by the yeast and things look quiet. But the yeast is still in there working, just on a different part of the cycle.

Edited May 28, 2020 by Journeyman

[DuffBeer]

That is solid advice, I will not stir it Thank you!