Brewed 2 batches, goofed a little on each

[PlumberKen]

Hi everyone,
Brand new to the forum but have been reading here for a while. I got the itch recently and brewed 2 5 gal batches after a few year hiatus. Both extract brews, one is a belgian strong ale 1.083 OG and one is an oktoberfest. Looking for a little feedback on some hopefully minor goofs.

Strong ale- I used white labs trappist ale strain and didn't even think to make a starter, just pitched the vial in. Took about 36 hours to notice airlock activity but is now bubbling very well with a nice krausen. Do you foresee any issues with finishing since i pitched a little low?

Oktoberfest- This one was a kit from LHBS, the description said it should be a OG of 1.055. I came up with a OG of 1.042 with 2-3.3 lbs cans of LME. Like i said i haven't brewed in a while and didn't think much of the OG except a typo maybe, and pitched the yeast. Just to see what I would end up with I went on to brewersfriend, put in the recipe and came up at like low 4's on the ABV, and wanted it to be a bit higher. I boiled up a pound of light DME with a little hops and threw it in the fermenter. The new stuff I put in was a little thick like a light syrup. Before I threw it in I had nice activity in the airlock, and afterwards it tapered down quickly over the next 6 or 8 hours. Did this hurt anything? Will yeast temporarily slow down if you adjust the sugar content?

TIA

 

[PlumberKen]

anyone have any thoughts at all?

 

[AJBrew710]

Hey Plumber, I'd say things will turn out well. For the strong ale, you may get some more esters from the yeast, and it may not attenuate down as low as it would have with a starter, but it'll probably still turn out great. If you have any control over the temp, you could increase the fermentation temperature a couple degrees towards the end of fermentation. That will help the yeast stay active and hopefully attenuate a bit further.

As for the Oktoberfest, I don't think it would've hurt anything to add a second batch of "wort" to increase the gravity. How long was it fermenting before you added the second batch, and did you cool it before tossing it in the fermenter?

 

[boydster]

So for the Oktoberfest, fermentation had already started and then you added in more wort? I would be concerned about oxidizing the beer. It's fine to add more before fermentation starts because the yeast go through an aerobic phase where they use up the oxygen in the wort. Once you see airlock activity though, the yeast has moved into an anaerobic phase and any extra oxygen introduced runs the risk of creating off flavors (think old moldy cardboard). If you only added a little extra wort, and it was pretty warm, and you didn't allow any splashing, then there might not be any issues. Volume, temperature, and agitation all play a role in how much O2 you may have introduced into the batch.

 

[PlumberKen]

Hey thanks for the replies. the extra wort i added was very minimal and closer to a thin syrup by the time it boiled down, i did cool it down but probably somewhere around 100 deg a little warmer than maybe it should have been, the fermenter was at 75 or so. it didn't splash at all going in. i originally brewed it friday night and pitched by about 10pm. very small activity started in the airlock about an hour later, it was a well rehydrated dry yeast. saturday morning i had maybe 1 bubble/second, and i added the new wort around noon so figure 12 hours it was in there. then like i said the activity just kind of tapered down to almost nothing by about 8 pm.

 

[C-Rider]

If you are doing an extract kit it's pretty hard not to get the correct OG. Most likely you didn't mix the top off water in good enough. Hard to under OG an extract kit.

 

[AJBrew710]

So with the timeframe you mentioned, I wouldn't worry about the splashing. That early in primary fermentation, yeast will clean up the additional oxygen pretty fast. It's possible that adding some 100 degree wort thermally shocked the yeast, and it may take them a bit to pick back up. You could always add some more yeast if it doesn't pick back up after a day or two.

 

[boydster]

The 100* wort would have practically no oxygen in it, and if there was no splashing you're almost certainly fine. Given it was a small amount added into 5+ gallons, you probably didn't really even shock the yeast. The 5 gallons has a lot of thermal mass to absorb the temp of the additional wort.

Have to agree with C-Rider, though, if this happens for you in the future. A measured amount of extract into a measured amount of water will give you a calculable OG - there isn't much (or really, any) wiggle room.

 

[PlumberKen]

there is a very small amount of airlock activity now, talking like 1 bubble every minute or 2 but i guess that means its working right? ill take a sg reading in a couple days just to make sure. i can appreciate that it should have come out to whatever gravity the kit said and i didn't think too much about it when my hydrometer reading was low, the thing that made me put a little extra in was when i used the online wort calculator it came up with 1.044 whereas the kit originally said 1.055 or so. this was a kit put together by LHBS not a commercial kit, i would think the calculator is more accurate, no?

 

[PlumberKen]

Hey just wanted to give an update, my Belgian Strong Ale fermented out beautifully, even though I didn't make a proper starter and just pitched the single tube of white labs trappist. OG 1.083 fermented down nice and clean to 1.016 which is actually just a few points lower than I expected, but I also put a little extra candi sugar in there that I had so I would think that's probably why?

The Oktoberfest on the other hand is stuck at 1.020 where I think it should be down like 1.012. There's also little tiny things floating in it, like I said I haven't brewed in a long time could that still be yeast doing its work? If it doesn't get down over the next few days should I pitch more yeast?