Autolysis myth busted

I'm ready to call mularky on autolysis being an issue on the homebrew scale.  My friend was injured for about a year and didn't brew.  He just opened a Cal Common that had been sitting on primary yeast cake in a standard plastic bucket at 65F for almost 13 months.  Smelled, tasted fine and was still bitter.  He kegged it. 

Certainly makes the case that we can let the primary go for 3 to 6 weeks with no worries.  And the plastic bucket did not lead to oxidation issues either. 

Asumming you'd know what autolysis tastes like. The world’s only Grand Master Level V Beer Judge claims he couldn't even taste it in his own beers until someone else pointed it out to him.

It is said that Autolyzed yeast enhances flavors by chemically altering a person's taste buds.


I personally don't know much about it. 65* seems like a rather cool storage though. I have a couple fermentors sitting outside the chamber currently sitting on cakes in excess of 80* that I worry about.

Maltlicker:

There are conditions under which autolysis is inhibited. One of them is oxygen presence, which is quite possible in a bucket environment. The right amount of nitrogen (as would be found in an all malt beer) moderate alcohol (average 5%) and pH in the range of 4.1 to 4.6 are all very favorable to long term yeast storage.

The next is the matter of sterols and yeast health, when repitched. If repitched after such a long dormancy, the next batch probably would not have been as good as a fresh yeast batch.

Autolized yeast has a meaty, brothy flavor that is part of umami. It creates a savory flavor that is very familiar to us, because it is in a whole lot of foods we eat. A couple of popular bread strains create autolysis with glutamic acid (MSG), so we get it in crackers, breads and other baked goods.

It's not surprising that autolysis isn't noticed in fairly malt rich styles like Cal Common, Scottish and Old Ales, Barleywines and the like.

I don't know about the consistency of going 13 months, but certainly, all grain homebrew is less susceptible to autolysis. In a (mostly) bygone era where poor malt extract, 50% sugar and bread yeast were normal, the likelihood of autolysis was a lot greater.

The point was that in 5 and 10 gallon batches, the rush to rack off the primary in 7, 14, or 20 days to avoid autolysis may be over-stated, and that very question pops up here.  And that fear of autolysis which leads to rushing the fermentation then leads to more common issues we taste all the time:  green apple, diacetyl, etc. 

Or sometimes it is a new brewer following the kit instructions that say ferment for seven days and then rack to carboy. 

So I'm suggesting that we're probably very safe letting every batch sit in primary 3-4 weeks to allow the primary ferm to fully complete and clean up those by-products.  And if we buy into that premise, then we could usually skip secondary if the beer is clear enough for our needs and preferences, and there's no other compelling reason to age it longer in a bulk secondary.