I have recently been informed as to why my beer has been tasting funny. It sounds like I am letting the yeast stay active to long which is giving me an off state. I am now refrigerating my beer after fermentation until I am ready to bottle. Can I let the beer return to room temperature before bottling to reactivate the yeast for priming?
Yeast treatment
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dlaramie08
Well-Known Member
Where did you hear such awful advice?
tally350z
Well-Known Member
What type of off flavor are you getting?
dannyhawkins
Well-Known Member
I'm not convinced. As far as I know, the longer you let the yeast work, the more off flavors they will clean up.
I am not sure what "long activity" is, but I am sure that you won't have off flavors if you aerate well your wort, pitch proper mount of yeast, pitch it cooler and let the temperature rise to final temperature and watch for fermentation temperature.
With these parameters you can let it stay active for months, but the true is that yeast have their metabolism and will eventually flocculate after it is done.
With these parameters you can let it stay active for months, but the true is that yeast have their metabolism and will eventually flocculate after it is done.
Different off flavors are the result of different practices. If you can describe the flavor that you are getting we can usually pinpoint the cause. For example a wet cardboard type of flavor comes from oxidizing your beer after fermentation (it is good to have oxygen in solution at pitching time). Then there are flavors such as bananna or apple which can be caused by fermentation temps. Do they come out sour? band-aidy? Butterscotch? Skunky?
Here is a link that can give you the descriptions of some different off flavors and their causes.
http://draftmag.com/offflavors/
What you are referring to doing is cold crashing, which is often done to clear the beer for packaging. This will slow the yeast activity, but enough is in solution still for you to be able to prime and bottle and still be able to carbonate. Unless you are fermenting your beer for years, you most likely are not getting any off flavors from yeast autolosis as beer yeasts tend to be very high quality and healthy nowadays and some of us, myself included have left their beer on the yeast cake for months at a time.
Here is a link that can give you the descriptions of some different off flavors and their causes.
http://draftmag.com/offflavors/
What you are referring to doing is cold crashing, which is often done to clear the beer for packaging. This will slow the yeast activity, but enough is in solution still for you to be able to prime and bottle and still be able to carbonate. Unless you are fermenting your beer for years, you most likely are not getting any off flavors from yeast autolosis as beer yeasts tend to be very high quality and healthy nowadays and some of us, myself included have left their beer on the yeast cake for months at a time.
