I have this friend who...

I swear this isn't really a story about me that I'm playing off as a story about a friend. If I was fortunate enough to have a kegorator I'd own up to this issue.

So she homebrews and has a keg with appropriate cooling equipment. (Modified fridge...)

So she had concocted this tasty looking Dale's pale ale extract clone recipe. Brewed it with the prowess of an extract brew goddess, let it ferment a week and moved it to secondary. Then 4 days later kegged, refrigerated, and force carbed... probably the day she served it to me. She admitted that was hasty, but she wanted to get it served for our almost weekly beer tasting.

I probably could have guessed the short life story of this beer from the taste; yeasty and raw... if raw means anything to you guys. It has potential.

What should she do to make this beer a seasoned butt kicker?

Bring it to room temperature for a few day to let the yeast finish the job they started.

RM-MN said:

Bring it to room temperature for a few day to let the yeast finish the job they started.

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That's what I would do but wouldn't the beer be carbonated after fermentation since the keg is sealed?

Good question banshee... thoughts, anyone?

Sounds like the beer was turned around on the fast side but unless there was a problem with yeast health I would expect it to be done fermenting after 11 days. So we're talking about aging/conditioning, which will happen whether it's carbonated or not (we age bottles all the time after all). I'd think you'd want to drink a beer like that fairly young but there's no problem trying to warm it up if you think it needs some more conditioning, as that may be slower at cooler temps. If it's just yeasty then I'd expect letting it sit chilled a while longer would clear it up.

I don't keg, but if you vent it to let the pressure off, don't you just have a steel-walled secondary?
Did she take a sg before kegging to make sure it was done? If sg is way off expected, may need to add some yeast. Otherwise warm it up to fermentation temps and let it sit for another week or two. Time heals all.
Good luck!

JimRausch said:

I don't keg, but if you vent it to let the pressure off, don't you just have a steel-walled secondary?
Did she take a sg before kegging to make sure it was done? If sg is way off expected, may need to add some yeast. Otherwise warm it up to fermentation temps and let it sit for another week or two. Time heals all.
Good luck!

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I second this. Purge off CO2 till the pressure drops, and let it sit a few more days, then recarb.

When you pitch yeast to a fresh wort, they produce a lot of stuff that's not particularly pleasant tasting while there's a lot of good malt sugar to go around. This tends to be more dramatic the more extract you use since there could be a deficiency of nutrients like FAN. After primary has tapered off, and their resources start to get scarce, they go back and eat alot of that unpleasant stuff they pooed out early on in fermentation. This (among other things happening simultaneously) is the process we know as conditioning, and it will occur in the bottle or keg.

Worst high in extract or adjunct sugars tend I have fewer of the nutrients yeasties like, and therefore it messes with their digestion and they produce more wonky stuff early on in fermentation. It may even be a good idea to pick up some yeast energizer from the HBS and sprinkle a little into the wort at flameout.

A wise man once told me the number one way to make your beer taste better is to pamper the yeast. They are, after all, doin all the heavy lifting. Cheers, and Godspeed

chickypad said:

Sounds like the beer was turned around on the fast side but unless there was a problem with yeast health I would expect it to be done fermenting after 11 days. So we're talking about aging/conditioning, which will happen whether it's carbonated or not (we age bottles all the time after all). I'd think you'd want to drink a beer like that fairly young but there's no problem trying to warm it up if you think it needs some more conditioning, as that may be slower at cooler temps. If it's just yeasty then I'd expect letting it sit chilled a while longer would clear it up.

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+1

Yeast still in suspension. A couple days at fridge temps will take care of that. Also, the beer is young and could benefit from conditioning, which will happen over time.

Do you know if she used dry yeast or liquid yeast? There is a fairly recent thread on here where someone did an experiment in which a batch was split - half was fermented with US-05 and the other half with WL001 (or Wyeast 1056 - I can't remember which). Both are the same strain, but the dry took about 2 weeks longer than the liquid to develop the same clean profile.

Do folks have a reason for recommending to purge the keg? I don't think regular carb level pressures would be enough to interfere with the yeast doing any cleanup. A number of breweries do pressurized fermentation for the last part of primary, so they are carbing the beer at the same time it's finishing fermenting. As I understand it pressure is only a potential issue for the yeast early in fermentation during the growth phase. Wortmonger has a long thread on here about closed system pressurized carbonation, sounds like he actually does the entire fermentation pressurized.

I would just warm it up but let it stay carbonated, as I have done a few times in the past when I felt I tapped a beer too soon. If you tasted a bottled beer that needed more conditioning, wouldn't you just take the rest of the bottles out of the fridge and let them sit? I've never heard of anyone uncapping to let the carb out just so they can age.

You make a great point chickypad. The only reason I thought to purge was that it might limit the amount of dissolved O2 in the wort which the yeast like, but your totally right. That's much more crucial for early primary fermentation which is more than likely already complete. As an added bonus, the CO2 in the headspace will also prevent oxidation during any sitting it will do.