Pitch Yeast or Keg ASAP?

[TANSTAAFL]

Any advice or opinion is appreciated: I need to make decision on pitching more yeast, or kegging.

On Monday, I brewed my first all grain, an Imperial Russian Stout, with an OG of 1.103. The target FG, as per BeerSmith, is 1.023.

Last night, I took a reading and got a 1.030 specific gravity at 73F - should I use this as my Final Gravity, and keg, or pitch another packet of yeast?

BTW, my actual interim reading might be higher: my hydrometer reads 1.003 at 60F, so I guess my current gravity is 1.033 or so. IF I add the +0.0016 differential for 73F from Palmer's book, that takes it to 1.0346 .... a +11.6 difference from the target Final Gravity of 1.023.

QUESTION: Should I pitch one more packet of yeast?

Initially, I used four packets of US-05. I had a bit of slurry on the bottom of the blowoff tube bucket.

Again, any opinions are appreciated - I'm trying to figure out if I should keg or not.

 

[FireManDan]

Patience is key, sounds like you have enough yeast. If you have a reading that low and you don't see much activity, my advice would be to rack it into a secondary (minimizing oxygen contact) and let it rest at 70 or below for a few weeks. I've let my stouts go for 2 months in the secondary before I bottled. No problem. Bottled accordingly and bottle conditioned for 3 to four months. The bottle we had at 1 month was good, the 3rd month even better, at the 4 month mark that beer didn't last a weekend. Conditioning with these big brews is important so that all the flavors Mello and meld together. Good luck guy, Cheers Dan

 

[kh54s10]

See my reply on you identical post elsewhere on this forum.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[beernutz]

I'm confused on the dates. You say you brewed Monday but don't specify a date. Today is Tuesday but surely you don't mean you brewed yesterday. How long has the beer been in the primary?

What is your plan once you keg? Are you going to cold crash it, age it further, prime it, or force carbonate? What is the rush to get it into a keg?

I like to start drinking beer asap but for a brew with a >1.1 OG I would like the others have posted be inclined to be patient.

 

[hawktrio]

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[TANSTAAFL]

All, thank you for the responses and sharing your opinions, it has helped. Consolidated, I will wait another week. IF the readings are not improving, I’ll rack to a secondary, to, as I understand, to minimize problems with autolysis, etc.

My intent for choosing this beer was to age it for at least 6 months, so I have something when its colder and I won’t have a chance to brew as much.


BeerNutz (And others): Sorry, I did not post until Tuesday, but I meant to say that I brewed the previous Monday, so about one week.

afr0byte … thank you for catching that I applied the hydrometer correction in the wrong direction. I used to be in a part of the Army where our unofficial motto was ‘we don’t think and you can’t make us.’

I uploaded the recipe with notes, and some notes about my learning curve on my first all-grain experience.

Again, thank you for the assistance.

= = = = =

CALACULATING VOLUMES AND UNDERSTANDING WATER

I tested my boil-off rate, to verify what BeerSmith had for the default, and, yes, it is about 3.2 gal an hour when using a Blichman burner with 72,000 BTU.

In the end, I was left with an excess 1 gal of usable wort. This probably happened for several reasons I induced:

• During mash-in I used the recommended amount of water from BeerSmith, 34.47qt.
• I ended up at 154F in the mash tun and it did not go down to 152F. Knowing that the first 5-10 minutes are critical, I added 1 gal of water to cool it down, and it did.
• I ended up with 9.5 gallons of wort pre-boil and added another gallon to get to the estimated pre-boil volume.
• BeerSmith somehow estimated 6.24 gallons for post-boil. After a 75-minute boil, I had a post-boil volume of 6.5gal of usable wort

.

I don’t understand how BeerSmith got to a post-boil volume estimate of 6.24gal.

GRAVITY UNITS/HITTING TARGET OG

Targeted Total Gravity/Original Gravity: I designed the 5.5 gallon batch recipe in BeerSmith 2.2 (BS), which calculated a target original gravity (OG) for the wort at 1.103. This would make my targeted Total Gravity (TG) to be 566.5 gravity units (GUs): 5.5 x 103 = 556.5 GU.

Pre-boil Specific Gravities/actual Total Gravities: I took a specific gravity of the 9.5 gallons pre-boil wort using two methods:

• Refractometer: The pre-boil SG was 1.061. So, 9.5gal x 62 = 578 GUs
• Hydrometer: The pre-boil SG was 1.060 @ 130F = 1.073. I applied the +).13 correction for the temperature from Palmer’s How To Brew. So, 9.5gal x 73 = 700.8 GU

I took the hydrometer/temperature readings twice, with the same results. Since the refractometer was closer to the target of 566.5 GUs, I used this.

Question/Issue/Discussion:
1. Why the bid difference in readings using the two different devices?
2. Which should I use?

Post-Boil: I again applied both the hydrometer and refractomer for my post-boil volume of about 6.5gal (actually, I only used 5.5 gal); see water calculation problem.

Hydrometer: The SG was 1.099 @ 79F, which corrects to 1.103 OG.
Refractometer: The reading was 1.099

Final GUs: Since I ended up with 5.5gal in the fermenter and another 1gal excess, I ran both calculations:
Total 6.5gal x 103 = 669.5 GUs (Refractomer of 1.099 comes to 643.5)
5gal x 103 = 566.5 (Refractomer of 1.099 comes to 544.5)

Questions/Issue/Discussion:
1. Why are the hydrometer and refractometers the same after the boil but not before?
2. Given this situation, how do I best estimate how many GUs are really in the fermenter. I assume that the 5.5gal is the right value, so I am generally in the right neighborhood.
3. I did not know what to do with the excess 1gal wort, did not have the equipment for a small test batch.

View attachment Stone Imperial Russian Stout 3.bsmx

 

[Redracer1205]

Does your refractometer measure the gravity in Brix and then you convertor to specific gravity? The conversion rate is approximately 1 P = 0.004 SG but it does drift away from this ratio at higher gravities.
Another factor to take into account is the temperature of the sample in the refractometer. I've copied this from Wikipedia "... the refractive index of a sucrose solution of strength less than 10 °Bx is such that a 1 °C change in temperature would cause the Brix reading to shift by about 0.06 °Bx"
Given that the hydrometer sample needed to be adjusted for temperature, the same should be taken into consideration for the refractometer. The temps of the refractometer and the sample are meant to be the same before reading. If you haven't given the sample a minute or so on the glass plate to cool before measuring this could be the difference.
The final point that I would raise would be is the sample the same? If the refractometer sample was grabbed at the top of the pre-boil wort it might be thinner than the wort towards the bottom of the pot. The wort always seems to have a settling where the wort is more dense at the bottom than at the top. When filling a tube for a hydrometer (or placing the hydrometer in the pot) it is being measured further down than a sample taken at the surface. Mixing if the wort before taking a sample for a refractometer should alleviate this.

But I will side with the others and recommend to rack to secondary and leave it for at least 2 weeks. I'm often guilty of impatience and wish I could tell myself to wait.

 

[Callacave]

With a SG that high and only fermenting it for one week you've had a really successful and healthy fermentation. I would let that thing sit in primary for another 2-3 weeks. Autolysis is a myth at the homebrew level. Let the yeast finish up the job and clean up + condition before kegging. And after those 2-3 weeks you'll definitely be sure that the gravity reading you're getting is the actual FG.

I would age that beer in the keg for at least 6 months to a year, or if bottling transfer to secondary, and let it sit for 6 months before bottling. You'll be surprised how much better and smoother it gets after that amount of time.