Brewing in this hot summer or any hot place

[Richardb22]

put a new brew on Sunday, a london porter pouch kit 50% dark sme and 50% + a bit brewing sugar. I am normally a lager or IPA at a push kit brewer but a well known kit maker had a sale and I fancied something different so I got a few bitters and this porter.

The instructions like most kits called for 8 days or so in my primary . Well it stopped bubbling ( almost ) and no change on gravity since day 4. Basically the yeast went for it in this hot weather. The pack did say that quality would be reduced if too high a brew temp is used and my kitchen was hotter than a pizza oven this week.

Is there any science to the statement my beers quality will go down. Could I fix whatever might be wrong with a lengthy mature in a secondary before bottling.

I have in my mind wrt IPA that it was imported to India as beer cant be brewed there. That must be wrong as i just googled coldest place in india and in Kashmir it gets " Bavarian " cold.

Hot summer day, kit beer ( they dont use lager yeasts I understand ) Whats the deal? I think I will risk a taste. .....I just did a teaspoon. Very guiness like. Bitter. Not at all bad. Carbonated like a lager this could be just fine. I think I have got away with it.

Richard

Thanks for your input.

Richard

 

[Epimetheus]

Tell people it is a "historic" brew, painstakingly duplicating the primitive brewing conditions of the original porters.

 

[flars]

IPAs' were probably shipped to India because archaic laws forbid the English in India from brewing. Protects and enriches the home brewing industry. Most of the English were in the warm climes rather than Kashmir.
Off flavors like fuesl alcohols produced in the first few days of high temp fermentation can not be corrected. Fermentation temperatures can be controlled with a swamp cooler and fan.

 

[sptaylor70]

Pale ale and porter were shipped to India because the breweries, and raw ingredients, were in England, not India. The wort would be loaded into barrels and hogsheads and whatnot, and would ferment en route. George Hodgson, in particular, would go down to the docks and ask returning servicemen what they wanted in their beer in India, and the universal answer was "more hops." More hops would keep the beer from spoiling, so it would taste fresh when it arrived and would keep awhile. So Hodgson increased the hopping to previously unheard of levels, and other brewers followed suit, helping to develop the styles we know today as India Pale Ale and East India Porter.

As flars said, once the fusels are there, it's difficult, if not impossible, to get rid of them. In the future, you might start fermentation cold with ice in a swamp cooler water bath. You might also consider using a yeast that's more tolerant of higher temperatures (Wyeast 1099 Whitbread, 1332 Northwest, 1335 British, 1728 Scottish, and most of the Belgian yeasts) to make a very fruity and/or Belgian-y beer.

 

[DocScott]

Is there science to the fact your beer's quality will be reduced? Yes.

The laymen's answer is, at higher temps (and lower pitch rates), the yeast growth phase gets screwy and will produce many more esters and fusel alcohols which make the beer taste "wrong". The scientific answer can be found on this forum, but requires lots of chemistry terms and biology reference which I won't go into here.

If your beer tastes ok to you, that's what counts. To ensure a more consistent end product and repeatable flavor, controlling your temperature is paramount.

 

[BigFloyd]

In light of the sorts of questions being posed and statements made by this thread starter here and elsewhere, me thinks we haveth a troll.

 

[Richardb22]

In light of the sorts of questions being posed and statements made by this thread starter here and elsewhere, me thinks we haveth a troll.

It has been a very hot week. Simply brew do have london porter on sale. Sterilising 40 bottles in a small kitchen is time consuming. Thanks to those who have answered

 

[mcspanner]

I don't think brewing was prohibited in the colonies as Englishman Edward Dyer is widely credited with forming India's first brewery in the 1820's to respond to the increased demand for British style beers created by George Hobson ( and others) over the preceding 50 years or so.

A maritime historian friend of mine believes that one of the reasons beer was shipped from here to India for so long was to do with the trade routes. Many more tons of cargo were brought into England from the empire than needed to go out, so it meant that ships were frequently sailing back with water or sand as ballast having much smaller outgoing loads. It made sense to use a saleable product as ballast so that the outgoing journeys were more profitable. A beer that could survive the long journey by being higher in alcohol and highly hopped fitted their needs well and as its demand increased the value of the outgoing cargo did too. Effectively what started as a practical way of balancing the sailing ship for the journey created a global demand for the new style of beer.

I've also read that many of the brewing and merchant families had fingers in the shipping trade pie and saw it as a way to develop a healthy export business on the back of their domestic sales.

Going back to the original question, yes biochemistry of yeast and fermentation scientifically proves that undesirable byproducts are caused by fermenting outside the temperature range of your yeast strain so you can evidence that your quality will degrade versus a properly temperature controlled fermentation.

When it gets too warm I brew a Belgian style that can cope with higher fermentations, this week I did a rye and spelt saison which is quite happy at 25°c ambient room temps or higher.

 

[ShaineT]

We've had triple digit temps here in the last several weeks. I brewed twice late into the night rather than during the day (I use the garage). Using extra space in the keezer for fermentation.

 

[flars]

It has been a very hot week. Simply brew do have london porter on sale. Sterilising 40 bottles in a small kitchen is time consuming. Thanks to those who have answered

What is your procedure for sanitizing? Perhaps we could pass along some hints to make the job go faster.

 

[Richardb22]

So far I fill my brew bucket with a solution of brewing steriliser from wilkinsons submerge three bottles at a time till they fill up empty them but they are still wet with the sanitiser put them on the counter repeat for eighty bottles by the time I get to the end the first bottles should be done rinse them out twice under the tap in the kitchen sink and hey presto a few hours later I am ready to bottle

 

[Richardb22]

I did not mean 80 bottles I did on my first brew use small bud bottles and never again niw I have 550 or 660 ml

 

[flars]

80 bottles. I thought wow, my technique definitely wouldn't likely work. I use 22 oz bottles for my favorite brews which I will have at least two 12 oz bottles in a sitting. Also use some 1 liter swing tops. Simplifies bottling a 5 gallon batch. I use StarSan as a sanitizer. It is no rinse sanitizer which eliminates a rinsing step and lessens the chance of recontaminating a bottle.
I set up all my bottles in the sink. With a gallon jug and small funnel add about 3 tablespoons of sanitizer to each bottle. Shake them up and dump the contents into the bucket I will use to sanitize other equipment. The bottles are put upside down in a rack to have them handy for filling. I use a bottling wand attached to the spigot of the bottling bucket. The bucket is up on a table. I sit on a rolling mechanics stool to save my back. The foam left in the bottles is pushed out by the beer when the bottle is full. The wand leaves the proper headspace. Drips are caught in a resturant style bussing tray on the floor. The rolling stool really works for setting the filled bottles off to the side.
The StarSan solution can be kept in sealed containers for reuse. The sanitizer remains effective as long as the pH is 3.0 (or is it 3.2?) or lower.
Hope some of this helps ease your bottling day. Happy brewing.