ercles on 23/4/2007 at 04:40
Although I'm learning about wine, not beer, ferments is ferments, so...
The story seems to be that there are now an insane amounts of different strains of yeast, which each produce different ratios of alcohol, and different by-products. They also have very specific temperature ranges.
So in response to your point on esters I might hazard a guess that if you are using a mixture of yeasts, changing temperature may increase the metabolic rates of specific yeasts with specific phenolics then being produced...
dlw6 on 23/4/2007 at 07:15
The same thing happened to me when I made mead in a carboy. That's why you need the trash-can shaped vessel for a primary fermenter, and go to carboy for secondary fermentation. The greater surface area lets the foam break before it overflows.
Proof of concept: Gently pour some soda in a wide-mouth thermos jar, and open another soda but leave it in the bottle. Put the lids on both, shake vigorously, then open them and see which spews more foam.
Don
Gingerbread Man on 23/4/2007 at 14:52
See, when we made mead it didn't do anything of the sort. When we made Irish Red, witbier, scotch ale, and American Brown... didn't do anything of the sort.
I've done double-pitches of exceptionally high-attenuation yeast into very rich wort and nothing of the sort happened.
And this was just one vial of plain old White Labs Hefeweizen yeast -- wasn't the WL 007 or anything... although the IPA we're about to start will be using a double-pitch, one of which is the 007.
Quote Posted by ercles
So in response to your point on esters I might hazard a guess that if you are using a mixture of yeasts, changing temperature may increase the metabolic rates of specific yeasts with specific phenolics then being produced...
Yeah. That makes me happy, the idea that there's even MORE subtle science that I haven't started to play around with yet. :D
Strangeblue on 24/4/2007 at 05:17
Sounds like saponification, since you got foam during the wort boil, too. Possibly an interaction between the barley malt and wheat malt, since the yeast wasn't yet introduced when you first got foam. Then you got an over active yeast reaction--probably from the temp--and that was trapped in saponification, and voila! bubbles like mad.
Was all of the malt dried? Or just one of them? Was this a kit or an assembled ingredient recipe? Also check to see if your DME or hops (if you didn't use whole fresh hops) had an additive, such as agar or moss or gypsum, to keep it from caking up--that'll often give you a soapy boil and primary ferment. That shouldn't affect the final product too much, but it does come up messy initially.
As to the OG versus FG, at what temperature were the samples when taken? If there's a serious difference in temp, you'll get an inaccurate difference in spec gravity from your calculation. So, if you took your OG when the wort was still pretty warm from the boil, you'll have an incorrect basis for your FG comparison which was certainly at a significantly lower temp. There should be tables for the temp correction available. 'Cause 12% from a hefeweizen is... well... freakish.
Gingerbread Man on 24/4/2007 at 05:22
All the hydrometer readings were corrected for temperature, yeah. I just think we've got a strong bastard on our hands, that's all. I was just curious if anyone else had done such a thing... Even using more a more precise formula than (OG-FG)*131 I end up with 13 point something...
And as far as the boil goes, this was flat-out kit DME with pellet hops.
We did make sure to taste-test it during bottling, and it tastes pretty damned good, though. We'll see how things go in a week or two. Now I just have to design a nice label for it :D
Strangeblue on 25/4/2007 at 01:20
Ahhh... I see.
Better tell us how it came out once you pop that first top. I'm all a-bristle with curiosity.
Gingerbread Man on 25/4/2007 at 02:10
You and me both, my sister.
The only thing that could have possibly gone sideways was the initial gravity, but since a more liberal view of the hydrometer would have resulted in EVEN HIGHER OG I'm still flipped the fuck out.
Usual OG / FG for a hefe ought to be around 1.050 / 1.010 or something, so what we have is mutant at 1.1 / 1.01. And I know you know more about this than I, my dearest apostropheBlue.
I'm not sure I've ever even heard of a brew with an OG in the 1.1s
Dunbar2 on 25/4/2007 at 02:11
Homebrewer here.
The overabundance of foam is completely ordinary. What you do with a carboy is attach a blowoff tube to the carboy and put the other end in a jug of clean water to maintain an airlock. After the fermentaion dies down in a couple of days you can remove the blowoff tube and put on a proper airlock. A friend of mine says that using a blowoff tube you get rid of some of the bad things in fermentation like fusel alcohols and some resin from the hops.
My local (
http://www.heartshomebrew.com/) homebrew store carries a glass blowoff tube which makes post fermentation cleanup easy since you just put a mixture of water and ammonia in the tube and the resins come right off.
On a side note, I highly recommend getting a kegging system. I used to bottle for years but ever since I bought a kegging system it is so much easier. You just sanitize the keg (instead of 48+ bottles) and siphon the beer from the carboy directly into the keg. Add the extra sugar (or force carbonate) and wait. It goes over great at parties too but if you only want to bring over a couple of bottles, you can fill them from the keg.
~Dunbar
Gingerbread Man on 25/4/2007 at 02:17
Oh, would that we had the room for a proper kegging system. :D
Strangeblue on 25/4/2007 at 12:41
We knew a couple who used a CO2 soda keg system. They were quite pleased with it. It is smaller and lighter and easier to store than a standard beer kegging system and less mess and fuss than bottles, but you do have to add CO2--the soda cylinders don't maintain pressure, themselves. Cuts out the bottle fermentation phase--for good or ill--and the carbonation effect is a little different. And they aren't cheap.
The blow-off tube idea works really well with anything that's got a lot of sediment, foam, or big globs of fruit and such--like the infamous blackberry cider that exploded on our walls when the fermentation lock clogged and the gas pressure blew the thing off. That was a rather bad day....
