will this kick start a second ferment?

[te-wa]

hey all; i made a pumpkin porter and kegged it for a few days. tasted the semi-carbed result and i felt it should have some background sweetness. i added 4oz Brown sugar to the keg, brought it up to room temp.

im hoping the yeast will re-new their activities at 75° and dry it out a bit. i have been discharging CO2 from the keg every few hours.

i guess i should give it a week before re-chilling it and putting it back on gas?

what are expected results IYO from added sugars -after- kegging?

(i personally expect the yeast to act the same way that bottling would give me)

thoughts?

 

[nimboden]

I guess it just depends how much active yeast is left in the keg. If you want sweetness I would have made a super concentrated simple syrup from the sugar and just add it to taste along its path to carbonation.

I'm no expert on yeast so I'm not sure the activity they will have on the sugar. If the beer wasn't already carbed a bit I'd say if you vent the keg and you hear CO2 come out then there is yeast still eating the sugar in the keg....but since it's carbed a bit then I don't know. I am leaning to say that the sugar you added will act the same as dextrose does in bottling and in the closed environment of the keg it will carb itself.

Give it a few days without venting and then see how much carb is in the keg is my suggestion. Will give you an idea. Keep us updated and best of luck!

 

[eastoak]

this is the first i've seen this attempted but if the keg is at serving temps the yeast will be dormant. i'll follow this to see what develops in terms of flavor. tasting beer before it's fully carbed and conditioned is tricky and i would not make decisions based on green or semi green beer.

 

[te-wa]

update, as it is still early final decision cannot be made.. but here's the recent:

had to shake keg vigorously a few times per day to bleed off the CO2... then i remembered that yeast need oxygen to convert, so i placed an aerator in the keg for a few minutes. now, the yeast seem to be active. i'll give it a week of releasing pressure before i'm confident that they have used up the brown sugar. then, back on chill and CO2 from the tank. i'm thinking this is not much different than a secondary with adjuncts.

more later!

 

[kh54s10]

update, as it is still early final decision cannot be made.. but here's the recent:

had to shake keg vigorously a few times per day to bleed off the CO2... then i remembered that yeast need oxygen to convert, so i placed an aerator in the keg for a few minutes. now, the yeast seem to be active. i'll give it a week of releasing pressure before i'm confident that they have used up the brown sugar. then, back on chill and CO2 from the tank. i'm thinking this is not much different than a secondary with adjuncts.

more later!

This was probably a bad idea. You have probably oxidized the beer. Maybe the yeast will take care of this but, I do not have hopes that you improved anything and probably did more harm than good.

I have no experience with this so hopefully I am wrong.

 

[jakenbacon]

Ya I am gonna go with kh on this one....

 

[eastoak]

update, as it is still early final decision cannot be made.. but here's the recent:

had to shake keg vigorously a few times per day to bleed off the CO2... then i remembered that yeast need oxygen to convert, so i placed an aerator in the keg for a few minutes. now, the yeast seem to be active. i'll give it a week of releasing pressure before i'm confident that they have used up the brown sugar. then, back on chill and CO2 from the tank. i'm thinking this is not much different than a secondary with adjuncts.

more later!

let us know what happens but like others have pointed out adding O2 to your beer was probably not a good idea.

 

[te-wa]

i appreciate the advice, all.

what im hoping is that the O2 fed the yeast so they can reproduce.. and offload some CO2 in the process. that seems to be what they are doing, i have released pressure from the valve every few hours for a couple days now. also hoping that the "3-12" months of oxidation to become noticable is true.. because i'll drink this 5 gal batch in a month or less.

fingers crossed?

 

[te-wa]

12 days after adding the brown sugar and aerating the yeast have stopped activity. tasted fine, much less sweet than when i started this (expected).

i dont taste any hint of staleness, sherry, metallic etc..

just put in on 12 psi and will prolly tune that back to 9/10 psi after a couple days. it's very hard to tell if any oxidation occured, i believe i did get some in my last batch so i *think* i am aware of what it does to an otherwise great beer.
still learning, and i know the porter experiment was risky.. but so far it's ok. if this turns out effed after a few weeks then i'll post my results. prosit!