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have to cast yeast - again ARRRGGGGHHHH

CR

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I made a doofus error. 
pitched at a Temp a tad too high and now - - no ferment: nothin', nada, zip.
I'm wondering is I can use a different yeast
say a Cask ale yeast  after unsuccessfully pitching the ESB - which all died off.
Or would I be nutz to pitch anything but more ESB?





 
A couple of questions first

What temp did you pitch at, what was "a tad to high"?
What was your OG?
What is the current gravity?
When did you pitch?
How much yeast did you pitch?
When did you measure the current gravity?

ROT:  NEVER pitch warm and cool down,  always pitch cool and warm up.  Your beer will like you for it.

Fred
 
I killed it with heat.   91 Degrees F. It was a doofus error.
I could say I was tired.  I could.  
It's still a doofus error.
Maybe not as bad as Forrest Griffin spooning the guy he just beat.

I got myself another 1968 ESB  I'll cast it when it swells

Rather not chance a weird multi yeast ferment.

Gravity: 1.04 or there abouts.
It was  single infusion. all grain a modified version of Left Coast Pale Ale


As an interesting aside:
Oxygen.
Some authors lose their minds  over the possibly that one might  incur a lot of splashing when transferring a hot wart  because of the oxygenation - - - And then those same authors will  insist that you use something to oxygenate the wart like a whizzer on a drill or a sparging bubble and a tank of O.
This always struck me as  a deeply mixed message.





 
91F is not lethal to yeast.  In fact they love it!!!  Generally we don't like what yeast does at such a warm temp.  In fact 95F is about the upperend of where you want to ferment a saison at, but that is not this beer.

With that warm of a ferment it is very possible that your ferment has occured and is DONE,  thus we ask for your gravities.

Fred
 
I see. Well it ain't done 'cause it didn't start.
I put it in a  glass  primary fermenter  around 7:00pm last night and  the only direction the fluid  in the CO2 Lock went was in toward the wort as it cooled.  Not a single bubble occurred,  no foam, no scum, no activity at all and in the morning.  Just a nice looking well settled out wort with not even a scum line around the meniscus not even a bubble in the meniscus.
And this is the primary ferment.
I'm accustomed to lots of bubbles.

How much yeast?
A pack of 1968xl London ESP Wyeast Activator.

I was hoping for something when I got back from a trip to a brew supply at 2:00pm today but nothing.
When I say nothing, I mean absolutely nothing.
 
I  cast again and it looks like it's taking and making CO2.
Al Gore would hate me. 


 
My appologies,  I assumed that you pitched several days ago.  It can take, at times, 2-3 days to see signs of fermentation.    This is because during the first phase of yeast growth the yeast multiply and respire (consume O2) and do not ferment (produce CO2 and alcohol) until they have reached their growth limit.  I doubt you are seeing fermentation from the pack you pitched less 4 hour before your last post.  That is more than likely the result of your previous pitch.

Fred
 
http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

If you tinker with JZ's yeast calculator, plug in a date only one month ago and see how much the liquid yeast viability plummets.  Only 76% viable.  So check the mfr'd date on the packages.  Anything older than two weeks really needs a starter, if only a small one. 

And 91F is great for rehydrating dry yeast, but would seem much higher than W1968 prefers to eat, per the Wyeast site.  And I would assume warm wort holds less O2 just like a warm beer holds less CO2 (gas is gas?).  So whatever aeration you did might have escaped and not been there for the yeast to grow. 

And now that it's going, allow time for the extra by-products to be cleaned up, esp. diacetyl since they warn specifically about that with W1968. 


"Fruitiness will increase with higher fermentation temperatures (70-74F, 21-23C). Diacetyl production is noticeable and a thorough rest is necessary. Yeast traps trub easily and autolysis during storage is accelaerated. A very good cask conditioned ale strain due to rapid and complete flocculation."
http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_yeaststrain_detail.cfm?ID=22
 
bonjour said:
My appologies,  I assumed that you pitched several days ago.  It can take, at times, 2-3 days to see signs of fermentation.    This is because during the first phase of yeast growth the yeast multiply and respire (consume O2) and do not ferment (produce CO2 and alcohol) until they have reached their growth limit.  I doubt you are seeing fermentation from the pack you pitched less 4 hour before your last post.  That is more than likely the result of your previous pitch.

Once again I would have to agree. But Gravities would help confirm if there has been any activity at all. You should also note that I along with others have had slow starts using 1968.

Cheers
Preston
 
CR said:
As an interesting aside:
Oxygen.
Some authors lose their minds  over the possibly that one might  incur a lot of splashing when transferring a hot wart  because of the oxygenation - - - And then those same authors will  insist that you use something to oxygenate the wart like a whizzer on a drill or a sparging bubble and a tank of O.
This always struck me as  a deeply mixed message.

"It is known that oxidation plays an important part in the formation of protein haze and that compounds known as melanoidins function as anti-oxidants and prevent the oxidation of protein. Oxidation also plays an important part in the production of colloidal haze, hence the name "oxidation haze", first coined by Helm, the German brewing scientist, in early part of this century.

Moreover, the formation of chill haze is also considerably increased by oxidation. Chill haze occurs in finished beer during cold storage, the chill haze will disappear if the beer is warmed (this is only viable if the beer is to be consumed immediately, if the beer is chilled again the haze will return). Later the beer will throw an irreversible haze at ordinary temperatures. Permanent haze is the end product of chill haze. If you get chill haze permanent haze will follow in time.

The oxidation of melanoidins will result in a lower quantity of stable colloids. Unstable colloids promote chill haze and permanent haze in beer. Conversely, the presence of stable colloids inhibits chill haze. The stability of beer colloids is the result of a very complex equilibrium, and the whole problem of colloidal haze formation is very complex. A better understanding of this problem will show it possible to take some steps to minimize its effects in finished beer."

Hot side aeration generally takes place at and above 86F. Oxygen is vital for proper yeast growth during the aerobic phase of fermentation. So you should be adding your oxygen at 68-70F.

 
dhaenerbrewer said:
Hot side aeration generally takes place at and above 86F. Oxygen is vital for proper yeast growth during the aerobic phase of fermentation. So you should be adding your oxygen at 68-70F.

I've chased this paradox down the rabbit hole more than once, and I do chill down to 60F and aerate and pitch cool.  And I purge later vessels with CO2.  BUT, I decided to quit losing my mind over it after seeing Brooklyn Brewery on a PBS show.  They were absolutely blowing their hot wort from their mash tun to their lauter tun with these huge pumps--it must've still been ~150F and just spraying every which way.  I figured if THAT doesn't cause oxidation staling compounds then nothing does.  And if the pros aren't sweating it, then I won't either. 

Is commercial beer just consumed fast enough that HSA/oxy-staling usually is not an issue?
 
Is commercial beer just consumed fast enough that HSA/oxy-staling usually is not an issue?

Maybe, However it is more likely that they are filtering out the proteins, therefor they can do what they want. Unlike most HB'ers we don't filter and do worry about it.

Cheers
Preston
 
I've chased this paradox down the rabbit hole more than once, [...] Brooklyn Brewery on a PBS show.  They were absolutely blowing their hot wort from their mash tun to their lauter tun with these huge pumps--it must've still been ~150F and just spraying every which way.  I figured if THAT doesn't cause oxidation staling compounds then nothing does.  And if the pros aren't sweating it, then I won't either.  

I suspected as much.   I wonder if the thing being spoken of is that same  phenomena  when many sorts of  warm fluids are exposed to odd odors in the air and something in the fluid effects a  strong bond with compounds in the air.  This is an issue in dairy work especially home dairy work when milk is warm from the animal and is not chilled quickly.   It can pick up odors in the air  that can give it an off taste.   Maybe in the home your wort might pick up the  sulfur compounds in the air from cooking or a garbage pail nearby and take an off taste~??  Garlic and broccoli beer?   I'm just guessing here but, I suspect that this is the case.

Compare to the vocational brewery where there is no garbage pail, no cooking odors it is all beer 24-7.  Any odors picked up  would be beer odors.

It's been my experience that  on the internet an awful lot of information is passed around that may have some foundation in fact but yet is handed  from person to person with  no one asking any critical questions.  And when the person passing the information on is  generally knowledgeable (naybe even very much so)  there is no reason to question every single thing he says.  

This fellow tried to ask this exact question: "Must one aerate and what is the result if one does or does not?" So he conducted his own comparison tests.  
http://brewery.org/brewery/library/WorAerJS.html
His result  is that it makes no difference.   At least it made no  difference in the samples he ran and no  difference that was observable  on the gross level by casual inspection.  He was not  counting yeast cells.

I must confess I have never aerated.  Never - ever. I just never gave it a thought.   When I've seen people talking about doing it I thought to myself that it seemed to me that they were taking yet one more chance of contaminating their brew by sticking yet one more  thing into it.

I sort of suspect that the yeasts need for oxygen can be met from surface interaction and residual oxygen in the wort even after the hour boil.  
I have a twin stage Sergent Welsh  rotary vain vacuum pump.  And I have a vacuum bell.  I think  that sometime I shall hook the pump up to the jar with a  volume of boiled wort  inside and pull vacuum to see if there's any entrained gas in the fluid.  I suspect I will find that it does give off gas - that boiling  does not remove  all the entrained air.  

One could also do this with a hypodermic syringe just put some boiled wart in, plug the end  with a finger, and pull on the plunger.  
If bubbles result then that means there's gas in the wort.
I do not however, have a syringe.




 
On HSA, I do not doubt the science behind it, or that these staling compounds can be created if one is sloppy.  I guess I came to equate it to those lab tests where they show peanut butter causes cancer.  Well, if you inject three ounces of PB under the skin of an eight ounce rat, it can't be good.  On my scale, being careful, I think I've taken every reasonable step to minimize HSA.  So I don't sweat it now.

On aeration, I absolutely agree that adding O2 is helpful to the yeast and their ferm process.  Too many yeast scientists with the right equipment and testing budget have looked at that to doubt it.  Big-scale brewers counting pennies profit per barrel would not spend the money for in-line O2 infusers if they could avoid that expense. 

Like so many things we discuss/debate here, aeration is a personal choice of the brewer whether to do it, and how, depending on their equipment, budget, time, etc. 
 
I believe the Peanut Butter thing is subsequent to  an aflatoxin mold that grows on peanuts.  It is a powerful liver toxin and carcinogenic.

I keep a culture of Sourdough yeast. Every once in a while I think about that poor bastard who had his whole face eaten off by a mold he sniffed into his nose  (without knowing it) while rummaging around in his fridge.  There is no cure. They had to operate and remove and now he's got an ugly horrid hole where his face and eyes used to be.

About HSA.   
This guy here: http://www.brew-dudes.com/hot-side-aeration/124
Talks about too much aeration being bad.
I suppose too much of anything is bad.
Except beer of course.  Ya can never have too much beer.


 
Ok. Where to start. First off, have you ever had Brooklyn Breweries beer? Not great. Good, but not great. Definitely prone to staling. Filtration definitely helps remove proteins, but when you have unstable proteins like the one's mentioned in the previous post, they simply will not filter. The beer will appear clear, and then a week or so later it's hazy all over again. As a homebrewer, I personally don't care about my beer being perfectly clear; but as a professional it is very important and HSA is a big concern.

As far as yeast and oxygen are concerned. http://www.maltosefalcons.com/tech/yeast-propagation-and-maintenance-principles-and-practices . That will tell you everything you need to know.

Darin
 
dhaenerbrewer said:
....have you ever had Brooklyn Breweries beer? Not great. Good, but not great. Definitely prone to staling...... but as a professional it is very important and HSA is a big concern.
Darin

Is their setup atypical of many large-scale breweries?  What percent of big brewers move their warm mash from one vessel to another?  If it is a known issue to pros, I would think that type setup would quickly fall into disfavor and they would be seen as a dinosaur in the industry. 

 
When I was brewing at BJ's in Oxnard, we had a 2 vessel decoction system ( strange I know ). It worked like this. The kettle ( steam jacketed ) had a huge mixing paddle at the bottom. We would mash into the kettle, do whatever rests we needed to do, then pump it over to the lauter tun. We used a centrifugal pump, which in itself introduces a lot of oxygen ( a positive displacement pump would have been better, but hey, that's what we had ). We pumped the mash directly into the bottom of the lauter tun, right above the screens, nice and slow. We could then pump back into the kettle for decocting ( which we did maybe twice for a mai bock and a dunkel weizen ). There wasn't a lot of agitation or splashing. It was mostly the pump that I had issues with. And yes, we did have problems with chill haze and staling. Now, as far as chill haze goes, there are MANY things professionals use for colloidial stability in the kettle. They are expensive and not readily available to the homebrewer. These however do nothing to prevent the staling problems with HSA.

This setup would have been more favorable as a 4 vessel system ( Mash Tun, Lauter Tun, Kettle, Whirlpool ), which is widely used by larger commercial breweries. Their biggest concern is "How many brews can we push through in one day". Colloidial stability can be taken care of with adjuncts, and staling c an be minimized with good manufacturing practices, and inventory control. The world of the professional brewer on a large scale is a strange one. Very far removed from the passionate, artistic character of the home brewer. I miss it, but not too much. I love the creative freedon.

Darin
 
Thanks.  So, big picture, and despite wildly different scales, pro brewers and home brewers both do the best they can with the equipment they have?  And pros have more chemicals and techniques to do the best they can?  It is interesting that I've never really cared for the core Brooklyn beers, just their big Chocolate stout.
 
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