rapid ferment / off flavours

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hello,
I am a first time brewer and a few days ago i completed my first brew. I made a saison recipe from a malt miller all grain kit. I am using mangrove jacks m29.
I have a more or less constant 30º here and am trying to keep my process as simple as possible and see what I can produce in this environment as beer here is generally expensive for rubbish and well overpriced for anything thats nice to drink.
I think I have answered my own questions slightly as I just took a gravity reading as I thought my ferment had stalled but it seems to have eaten most of the sugars in 60 hours due to the high temp. og was 1052 now 1004.
I read people talk about fusel taste and this can be caused due to high early ferment temp.
I tasted it, it was beer but it had a pretty nasty mouth feel and taste after swallowing.
Is this likely to stay? I read somewhere most of it will dissipate if I let it sit in the fermentor for two or three weeks?
How long can I safely leave it in there before things start to go bad in this temperature?
I also plan to bottle and chill for a week or two before consumption if possible.
cheers!
 
hello,
I am a first time brewer and a few days ago i completed my first brew. I made a saison recipe from a malt miller all grain kit. I am using mangrove jacks m29.
I have a more or less constant 30º here and am trying to keep my process as simple as possible and see what I can produce in this environment as beer here is generally expensive for rubbish and well overpriced for anything thats nice to drink.
I think I have answered my own questions slightly as I just took a gravity reading as I thought my ferment had stalled but it seems to have eaten most of the sugars in 60 hours due to the high temp. og was 1052 now 1004.
I read people talk about fusel taste and this can be caused due to high early ferment temp.
I tasted it, it was beer but it had a pretty nasty mouth feel and taste after swallowing.
Is this likely to stay? I read somewhere most of it will dissipate if I let it sit in the fermentor for two or three weeks?
How long can I safely leave it in there before things start to go bad in this temperature?
I also plan to bottle and chill for a week or two before consumption if possible.
cheers!
Green beer, that is, beer that hasn't gone through its conditioning phase, generally doesn't taste good. As you mentioned, give it some time - a good deal of that nasty flavor is simply yeast that hasn't dropped out! Fusels would come across as a warming, alcoholic, or even solvent-like flavor and the flavor threshold for most fusels is pretty high. Chances are time is all your beer needs.
 
ok thats good news to me, thank you!
any ideas on how long it can comfortably sit in the fermentor before things will go south ?
 
Saison with normal amounts of hops for the style and healthy yeast, a few weeks easily. See how it's going 1.5 to 2 weeks after you brewed.
 
As Mark said, several weeks. Of course, you could rack it off the main yeast cake and let the bit that's still in there settle. Given time, the fusels get converted to esters, in fact, this is the main source of flavor in beers, and the rather foul tasting yeast will settle out. Give it a couple weeks after primary is done, then try again. It'll keep for quite a while under its own beer!
 
The yeast only clean up off flavors during active fermentation. Age will still help with many off flavors (but not all) but it doesn't matter if it's in primary, secondary, or bottles.

No harm in letting your beer sit in primary for an extended time (even more than a month) but also not much benefit either.

Good luck!
 
I think your temp is definitely on the high side, even for a Saison. Your 30C translates to 86F and that's way up there when you consider that ambient temp will be several degrees cooler than wort temp at high krausen. I wouldn't doubt that your beer fermented at an internal temp of over 90 degrees. That's warm enough to almost guarantee at least some fusel production, 90F being the very top of the yeast's operating range.
Let it sit and settle down but I'd want to get it cooled down. The nasty organisms that you don't want to encourage all really love higher temperatures.
In future, one way to drop the temp a few degrees without too much hassle is to do a water bath with a tee shirt draped over the carboy and a fan blowing on it. The swamp cooler effect will keep the water at least several degrees cooler than the air temp. You could end up with a fermentation that's closer to the high 70s which will still give you all the character of the yeast without risk of harsh flavors or contamination.
Good luck! :)
 
ok, I will just leave it and see in a week how it is. I am a bit concerned about opening it up too much, I have got cling wrap and a elastic band on fermenter and scared to introduce new air, although I guess it can possibly get in as there is minimal co2 being produced now. I like the water bath/t shirt/ fan idea, J A, thats something I can easily implement, will use that next time, I guess not much benefit after 5.5 days? Also I should mention I pitched at the ambient temp here, I guess it would have been a good idea to cool the wort down to 20+ and then let it rise naturally over the few hours/day it would take to reach ambient temp.
thank you all for the advice:)
 
Saison with normal amounts of hops for the style and healthy yeast, a few weeks easily. See how it's going 1.5 to 2 weeks after you brewed.
what do you consider a normal amount of hops? this had I think 120g.
does more hops make the wort more liable to infection?
thanks
 
Less, actually. Hops inhibit growth of a lot of different bacteria.
 
I guess not much benefit after 5.5 days? Also I should mention I pitched at the ambient temp here, I guess it would have been a good idea to cool the wort down to 20+ and then let it rise naturally over the few hours/day it would take to reach ambient temp.
thank you all for the advice
Yes and yes...I wouldn't worry about water bath at this point, though it would be a good idea to cool it down as soon as you're sure it's finished and the yeast has started dropping. Cooling to a pitch temp of 65 or so might be nice and if you could manage to keep it below 70 for a day or so, it would help the yeast get going cleanly and then keep kicking as the temp rises.
 
The point about the hops was more to say that if it's an obviously hoppy beer you'll notice the hops flavour start to fall away 4-6 weeks after brewing. followed by the hop aroma. Hop bitterness will generally stay a fair bit longer. So if it's a normal saison with little to no obvious hop flavour you've got far more time to let any strange brewing flavours age away, than if it were a hoppy saison.

And that's a generalised estimate. Some methods of hopping will give you longer lifetime, others even less.
 
ok, lots to learn. I don't know if it is a a normal hoped saison, 20g of centennial 60 mins, 40g sazz 30 mins, 50g cascade 5 mins. is this a normally hoped saison?
will the hop flavour diminish in the bottle or is this just in the fermentor?
thanks
 
Honestly Saison is such an open style that you could hop with just about any amount or anything and call it normal. It also depends on the alpha acid percentage of your hops as well as how much malt needs to be balanced. It's a great reason to use recipe software like BF to see where you're at. When I make one I prefer less hops to let the yeast character shine through more prominently. And yes hop flavour will diminish over time regardless of where it's kept although keeping it cold will help prolong that time.
 
Honestly Saison is such an open style that you could hop with just about any amount or anything and call it normal. It also depends on the alpha acid percentage of your hops as well as how much malt needs to be balanced. It's a great reason to use recipe software like BF to see where you're at. When I make one I prefer less hops to let the yeast character shine through more prominently. And yes hop flavour will diminish over time regardless of where it's kept although keeping it cold will help prolong that time.
well whatever I've brewed it certainly fits in a more open style.
still getting my head around the software, understanding the technical jargon and relating it to how beer tastes to me.
I guess its a throw up whether to let sit in the fermenter to try and get less fusel flavour or bottle and chill earlier to retain some of the bitterness it has. will taste in a few days I guess and try and decideo_O
 
The bitterness will stay, mostly just flavor and aroma that fade. In a Saison that shouldn't be too big of a deal since you should still be getting good flavors from the yeast. Definitely give it a taste and see if fermentation helped clean it up a little. Let us know how it goes!
 
The bitterness will stay, mostly just flavor and aroma that fade. In a Saison that shouldn't be too big of a deal since you should still be getting good flavors from the yeast. Definitely give it a taste and see if fermentation helped clean it up a little. Let us know how it goes!
should I be worried about introduction of oxygen?
 
I just had a look and am wondering if I should be concerned with getting too much oxygen in the fermenter, I've got a jerry can with a spigot near the bottom but when you use it, it sucks in oxygen from the top though my elastic band/film set up. I am a bit paranoid about the fine bubble haze that is forming, almost creating a film on top, possibly a start of a Pellicle??
it is still producing small bubbles and odd lump of crud floating about and a couple of spots of yeasty looking Krausen sitting on the surface.
heres some pics
IMG_20180904_162217.jpg
IMG_20180904_162415.jpg

thanks
 
You know i never really get to concerned about whats going on ontop of my fermentations. Yes i check if krausen has formed or dropped but other than that its process as usual.

If it is some sorta wild fermentation which it doesnt look like too me well not alot you can do now. And peeping alot in the brew bucket is likely going to lead to some undesirables falling into finnished product.
I really cringe when watching the youtube videos of brewers chilling there freshly brewed wort with lid right off kettle fully exposed to the atmosphere o_O. Keep it covered only way after propper cleaning sanitation that bacteria can get into your beer is through the top of uncovered ferm vessal or poking un clean things into freshly brewed beer:).
 
You know i never really get to concerned about whats going on ontop of my fermentations. Yes i check if krausen has formed or dropped but other than that its process as usual.

If it is some sorta wild fermentation which it doesnt look like too me well not alot you can do now. And peeping alot in the brew bucket is likely going to lead to some undesirables falling into finnished product.
I really cringe when watching the youtube videos of brewers chilling there freshly brewed wort with lid right off kettle fully exposed to the atmosphere o_O. Keep it covered only way after propper cleaning sanitation that bacteria can get into your beer is through the top of uncovered ferm vessal or poking un clean things into freshly brewed beer:).
my first time so a novelty to me and don't know what to expect apart from what I see and read about.
pics are through my cling film air lock;) I can get quite a good view through now its slowed right down. I don't want to keep opening it up for fear of a infection, not ready to make sours quite yet.
im glad you think it looks normal, but the top is a bit film like.
:)
 

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