Oatmeal Pale Ale

[gwbbc]

Big Brew 1/22/2012

Scaled down to 5g

CaraHell .5#
Marris Otter 6.5#
Quick Oats 1#
Munich 1.5#
C40 1#

Boadicia 7.9aa .17 60m
Magnum 12.5aa .37 60m
Fuggles 4.6aa .35 5m
US Goldings 4.5 .4 FW

OG 1.061 (at 80% efficiency)
IBU 37.4

[ccc]

Anyone do a hot ferment yet?

[gwbbc]

what do you mean?
mine took off and is still cranking away. Blow off tube required

[PantherCity]

Thanks for posting, James!

[Zixxer10R]

Blow off tube abso-freakin'-lutely required. Mine is going nuts!!!

[E(vil)]

Thanks for that, James!

Yeah, my blowoff tube has been growling like mad. London III yeast orgy.

[myoungbaritone]

Yeah, had a bit of a slow start, but now it's bubbling like the creature from the black lagoon. My fiance was afraid it was going to come out and get her last night. :-P

[PantherCity]

So what yeast is everybody using?

I'm using wyeast 1469 - West Yorkshire Ale

from Wyeast:
"This strain produces ales with a full chewy malt flavor and character, but finishes dry, producing famously balanced beers. Expect moderate nutty and stone-fruit esters. Best used for the production of cask-conditioned bitters, ESB and mild ales. Reliably flocculent, producing bright beer without filtration."

Origin: Timothy Taylor (I added that, not from wyeast)
Flocculation: High
Attenuation: 67-71%
Temperature Range: 64-72'F (18-22'C)
Alcohol Tolerance: 9%ABV

I brewed a Best bitter on Saturday with this yeast as well. I'm optimistic, the description sounds great and I've read good things.

[Zixxer10R]

That description sounds like a marketing firm wrote it. I'm sure it will live up to the name, but all those buzzwords man, all those buzzwords.

[myoungbaritone]

So what yeast is everybody using?

I'm using wyeast 1469 - West Yorkshire Ale


I'm trying out Fermentis S-04 for the first time. Seems to be working out pretty well so far.

[Zixxer10R]

Danstar Nottingham. Simple, cheap, and nice attenuation.

[SirMichael]

I did the SO4. Pitched it dry. The first day it went up to 83 degrees and was bubbling nicely. I turned the freezer on and brought it down to 70 where I've held it steady with a 2 degree variation. So after one day of solid bubbling it slowed down to a bubble every couple seconds. Now Wed, very slow bubbling. There is evidence on the sides of the bucket that the bubble crust (can't remember how to spell it) came up about 3 inches. The current gravity is 1.020. So attenuation is about 68%. Rather low but I think also rather early to come to any conclusions.

As has already been pointed out, I killed half my yeast by pitching it dry. Also, I allow the temp to go higher than I intended. And I brought the temp down rather quickly. And I did not aerate.

I think it will be okay, probably. But I think generally most of my beers taste too sweet. So low attenuation could be an explanation for that? (However, I’m not this sloppy as a habit.) And in this case specifically I can expect it to stop fermenting sooner than it otherwise would and end up too sweet?

[Brandonovich]

As has already been pointed out, I killed half my yeast by pitching it dry.

There was a really interesting article in last month's BYO on pitching dry versus rehydrating, and after doing a study, they found no appreciable difference between dry and rehydrated yeast. I always pitch dry and have no issues at all.

[Zixxer10R]

If it really does stop at 1.020 couldn't you just pitch another package of yeast to finish off the job? If you're down to 1.020 by now though, after just a couple days then i'd say you're well on the way to a finished beer. Might be a slight bit of estery flavors though from the high starting ferm temps.

[ccc]

I did the SO4. Pitched it dry. The first day it went up to 83 degrees and was bubbling nicely. I turned the freezer on and brought it down to 70 where I've held it steady with a 2 degree variation. So after one day of solid bubbling it slowed down to a bubble every couple seconds. Now Wed, very slow bubbling. There is evidence on the sides of the bucket that the bubble crust (can't remember how to spell it) came up about 3 inches. The current gravity is 1.020. So attenuation is about 68%. Rather low but I think also rather early to come to any conclusions.

As has already been pointed out, I killed half my yeast by pitching it dry. Also, I allow the temp to go higher than I intended. And I brought the temp down rather quickly. And I did not aerate.

I think it will be okay, probably. But I think generally most of my beers taste too sweet. So low attenuation could be an explanation for that? (However, I’m not this sloppy as a habit.) And in this case specifically I can expect it to stop fermenting sooner than it otherwise would and end up too sweet?

S04 is not normally a sweet (low attenuation) yeast. Typically I would put S04 in the "kicks ass" group of yeasts. Pitching S04 dry, while not a good idea, works for most beers.

I think the turning on freezer put the yeast in shock (83 to 70 is big chill). They should recover shortly.

I am not at all certain where this beer should end up, hence my ask for any hot ferment numbers. Your S04 should get it down, as well or better than most yeasts. The 3in krausen is decent.

[SirMichael]

"Krausen" was the word I was looking for! Thank you Mr. Farmer or may I call you Yeast? :).

Yeast (aka CCC), Brandon and Josh, you all are pointing at what I'm thinking. If I I got some yeast activity, shouldn't I eventually get "enough" later? I just need to patiently wait for the yeast to recover. The actual risk, the reason we go for a starter, when we are not too tired, is if the desired yeast is so abundant that it takes over the whole fermenter it won't leave room for an infection. If we use a starter, aren't we just taking fermentables and adding some yeast cells so that we can get more yeast cells? A starter is a mini-brew equals a standard brew plus patience?

I think maybe I'm wondering why we get excited about a brew going so fast that it needs a blow off tube but imply that one just taking it's time isn't measuring up?

Rephrased: Does a lot of cells, thus creating a need for the blow off, produce a better brew than a patient slow brew?

[Zixxer10R]

The way i understand it, if you stress the yeast by not pitching enough of them you can potentially produce off flavors that you don't generally desire in a finished beer, except for those crazy belgian ones (and even then i suspect their climate when their beers were first documented really necessitated what is now a "standard" estery flavor) in which some stress flavors are desired.

[ccc]

Rephrased: Does a lot of cells, thus creating a need for the blow off, produce a better brew than a patient slow brew?

As you indicated, it reduces infection possibilities. The yeast make things the way they like it (ph etc) and the alcohol helps too. Also few yeast in a huge wort more takes more generations, thus variation/deviation from original. In the extreme case, the yeast may stop reproducing due to a limited resource (O2, mineral, etc) and then the few take a long time to consume fermentables. I still think you have enough and the chill will wear off.

PS: I did not see blow off with 400billion yeast cell pitch (about 4x smack pack), but plenty of room in the bucket for krausen.

[myoungbaritone]

I pitched my SO4 dry as well, and while it was a bit of a slow start, it's rockin and rollin now. I'm keeping the temp between 64 and 66 (yay ghetto temp control bin). I read that article in BYO about pitching dry vs re-hydrating as well, and it looks as if re-hydrating would make only a very marginal difference.

[Brandonovich]

The other reason for having enough cells is that once they are done fermenting you need enough healthy cells left over to clean up after themselves. They may be able to slowly get the fermentation where you need it to be, but if they are so stressed afterward that they cannot consume byproducts you could end up with diacytel and other undesirables.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

[shanman75]

There was a really interesting article in last month's BYO on pitching dry versus rehydrating, and after doing a study, they found no appreciable difference between dry and rehydrated yeast. I always pitch dry and have no issues at all.

I've found this following experiment to be interesting:
http://seanterrill.com/2011/04/01/dry-yeast-viability/

Sean's procedure resulted in a 56% drop in viability when pitching into wort versus water.

It's just one test, but there are cautions from multiple other sources including Fermentis.

Also, I found his separate experiment on under pitching to be very interesting. (related b/c loss of 50% of cells in a dry pitch often ends in under-pitching).

I'm interested in seeing the BYO article. I can't find it yet on their site.

Personally, I'd side with caution and wake up the dry yeast in water first. Though, I've been pitching straight in wort for some time :-/

[mwedge]

I agree it is so easy to rehydate and why kill ~50% of the yeast cells you just paid money for.

[Stubby]

Actually Accoring to Safale (Fermentis) they don't recommend rehydrating.

[nickpgoodman]

Their instructions talk about doing both.

http://www.fermentis.com/fo/pdf/HB/EN/Safale_S-04_HB.pdf

[shanman75]

Actually Accoring to Safale (Fermentis) they don't recommend rehydrating.

To be fair, Fermentis has conflicting information available on this subject.

Their packaging definitely instructs to sprinkle into wort, but their own published studies instruct to rehydrate in water first (some of their studies include re-hydration in wort...but "creamed" and prior to pitching).

I think the jury is still out on this one, but there seems to be enough evidence to hydrate the sleeping yeasties in water first.

So far, I've not read anything that said rehydrating in water hurts.

[mwedge]

Another data point from fermentis that says to rehydrate the yeast first. They do point out that water or wort is ok. Pages 5 & 6

http://www.fermentis.com/fo/pdf/Tips-Tricks.pdf

[Brandonovich]

The article is in the december issue of byo with brooklyn brewing on the cover. While they do note that some clinical evidence points to a drop in viability when the yeast is not rehydrated, the practical experiment they conducted showed no clear advantage either way. I feel like rehydrating adds another step in which infection can occur.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

[SirMichael]

I agree. The more steps the more opportunities for infection. Given the time and energy I think it is better to do a starter for all the reasons pointed out in this thread. But in a pinch, pitching dry will get you by. I'm not really expecting a bad outcome. And I don't know that a starter would have been the difference between nice beer and great beer. If I had competition in mind I would have planned better and would have had a good starter ready. One day I might compete but mostly I drink.

As far as pitching dry, when dry yeast is pitched it floats on the surface. If the difference in rehydrating and not is to avoid shocking, my mistake would be the shaking. I should have just light sprinkled and let it float. The yeast would then slowly hydrate itself and thus reduce the shock. That would possibly give me the delay Matt experienced but that is not the end of the world. It is just a window for wild yeast.

[myoungbaritone]

That's a total possibility. Granted, after it got going, and took off like a champ, and is still doing pretty damn well. I'm going to give it a couple of days, listen for the bubbles to die down a little more, then take a gravity reading, and put the airlock to it.

[mwedge]

I think it is extremely low risk for contamination and so simple to do. The way I rehydrate is to take a clean mason jar and fill with appropriate amount of water. Microwave for a couple of minutes to get the water boiling. Remove boiling water and cover with foil. The boiling water and steam will sanitize the jar and foil. I do this right as I start to boil the wort. Set the jar out at room temp and when it cools down to room temp I add the yeast to rehydrate.