Is this stout salvageable? High ferm temp.

[TheMerkle]

I decided to try a chocolate cherry stout, by brewing a Duck Rabbit milk stout clone recipe and secondarying on cherries, and finally adding Godiva liquor in the keg. The mash went flawlessly: despite being my first true all grain recipe we were able to hit high efficiency and nail the target OG. The problem arised when our previously tried and true (in the winter) CFC failed to handle this Florida summer heat. I did some reading and found several suggestions that I was better off pitching at 95 rather than letting the beer sit overnight. I have a chest freezer and was given the impression that, if set a bit lower than the target temp, it would cool the fermenting beer quickly. WRONG. This thing chugged ferociously, maintaining a 94 degree beat inside the 50 degree cooler for about thirty hours. Thirty hours is all it took for airlock activity to completely cease. The yeast is wlp004 Irish... should I let this thing sit in primary for a few weeks, or just secondary it as soon as I've got a stable FG? ...or should I just dump this thing and try again?

 

[cullen]

Pitching at 95 sounds like a good way to kill the yeast. If active fermentation is done, you can leave it in primary or move it to secondary. I wouldn't pitch it.

Before you do anything else but wait, take an SG reading and sample it.

 

[duboman]

Pitching at 95 will not kill the yeast but it does explain why it took off like a rocket and finished fast.

All you can do is taste it and verify FG. My guess is off flavors were generated and your taste/smell will determine tolerance and go from there.

Depending on the above evaluation you can allow it time to clean up and condition out and taste again before bottling/kegging

 

[DocScott]

Yeah. I'd taste it and see. If you get paint thinner or fusel alcohol smell or taste, I'd plan on a rebrew. If it seems ok, I'd let it sit for a while and thank the beer gods that you got away with it.

Unfortunately, I'm thinking with a 95 degree, 30 hour ferment, you could power a rocket with your stout. Hope I'm wrong.

 

[TheMerkle]

That's what I'm thinkin' too, Doc. I did get a good nose of it, though, and it doesn't SMELL hot... I know that's a terrible sense to judge fusels by, but it certainly gives me hope. What other off flavors are indicitave of high ferm temps? Acetaldehyde for one, right? Though I don't imagine green apple would be terribly off putting in a big sweet stout.

 

[progmac]

dump it and start working on the belgian strong dark you have in your sig

 

[TheMerkle]

The devil's advocate. Hah. I do love me a good Belgian Strong.

 

[BigFloyd]

Even without the extremely high ferment temp issue, you would have to give this batch a good three months of room temp conditioning for the complex flavors to meld and mellow. Yes, it really will take that long. I just now started sharing with friends some bottles of chocolate stout I brewed in February (and fermented in the 60's).

It's up to you. Do you want to wait until about October 1 to find out whether or not it's buggered beyond help?

 

[TheMerkle]

I suppose that depends on what kind of equipment it'll tie up. Can't I just wait for my fg to get down, secondary on cherries, then rack into a keg and carb up to taste? From there (correct me if I'm wrong) I can just pull the whole keg and throw it in a closet to condition in the keg without degassing or anything... or will that be ineffective?

 

[DocScott]

That would work. It'll tie up the keg and require work to rack onto the cherries and transfer to keg. If its rocket fuel now, it won't get better. If its ok now, I'd throw it into a carboy and age it or even keg like you said and age it.

 

[BigFloyd]

I suppose that depends on what kind of equipment it'll tie up. Can't I just wait for my fg to get down, secondary on cherries, then rack into a keg and carb up to taste? From there (correct me if I'm wrong) I can just pull the whole keg and throw it in a closet to condition in the keg without degassing or anything... or will that be ineffective?

You certainly can do that if you don't mind tying up the keg for months, because that's what it really going to take to know for sure.

With the kind of temps involved, I'm thinking that the process created enough fusel alcohol (which does not condition out) that, even after months of aging, it's going to continue to taste rough and give you a wicked headache.

 

[TheMerkle]

Certainly. I've had a fusel beer in the past, and I recall the headaches being simply intolerable. However, I also seem to recall it having a certain aroma... my friend referred to it as "hot". This thing doesn't smell that way, but then again that smell could be totally in my head. Not to mention that this stout is in the bottom of a deep freezer chugging it's balls off... all I can REALLY smell is co2

 

[TheZymurgist]

It might be a good idea to leave it on the yeast for a little bit. I ready in the book 'Yeast' that they will clean up a little after themselves once fermentation is done. Let it sit for maybe a week to give them some time, then rack to secondary. I think it will help in the overall conditioning. Age will definitely be on your side with this one, too. I bet after about six months, this will have mellowed out.

 

[TheMerkle]

The cost of redoing the batch and closeting a keg are about the same... of course there's always option C: closet the first batch AND rebrew the recipe. If it's not ruined with fusels it would be interesting to see what may come of this strain at high temps. I've read a lot about interesting things that may come from Irish yeasts when warm.

 

[TheMerkle]

Of course, all of this is a secondary concern now. The primary issue is how to improve my cooling system to handle a Florida summer. Currently I use a 25 foot CFC and run through a secondary 20 foot coil that I just submerge in water. I wonder if building the secondary coil into a small cylindrical igloo and filling with ice would do the trick.

 

[TheZymurgist]

This looks fairly simple, and cheap:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/entries/diy-wort-chiller.html

Honestly, if you practice good sanitation techniques, you'd be better off leaving the wort in the fridge to cool down before pitching, rather than pitching too hot, in my opinion. I've done this a number of times and haven't had an issue. I'm not sure what you read that led you to believe you should pitch hot rather than letting is sit overnight, but personally, I disagree with that.

 

[BigFloyd]

I'm not sure what you read that led you to believe you should pitch hot rather than letting is sit overnight, but personally, I disagree with that.

I was also wondering where he had gotten that. I would always rather let it cool overnight vs. pitching into 90+*F wort.

 

[TheMerkle]

Maybe it was a misconception I had established on my own? I was under the impression that the longer the time between the end of the boil, and pitching the yeast, the higher the risk of infection. In the future I will be more patient to hit my target temp regardless of the effectiveness of initial cooling... but I'd much rather get my cooling up to par as to not have this issue at all in the future.

 

[TheZymurgist]

Maybe it was a misconception I had established on my own? I was under the impression that the longer the time between the end of the boil, and pitching the yeast, the higher the risk of infection. In the future I will be more patient to hit my target temp regardless of the effectiveness of initial cooling... but I'd much rather get my cooling up to par as to not have this issue at all in the future.

No, there are people out there that are over cautious about contamination. Not saying it's necessarily a bad thing, but it's not always necessary, either. Yes, the more time between the boil and pitching, the more opportunity for contamination. But the risk isn't great enough when you're just waiting for the beer to cool. If you were going to leave it for a few days, or weeks, then there would be cause for concern. But IME, less than 24 hours, you're fine.

 

[TheMerkle]

Sooooo... a little update on Mr. Milky. I took the advice I was given and just went ahead and sampled the thing. It's actually really tasty, definitely green but for the most part I think the malt profile was strong enough to mask most of the off flavors. I thought it tasted mildly fusel, but my partner didn't agree. I thought it may just have been an earworm from this thread so I recruited a housemate's uninformed (Uninformed about the fusel fermentation situation; Not uninformed about beer tasting) taste test and got no complaints of alchohol harshness in the flavor or the smell. I took the gravity and the hydro and refracto agreed to it being 1.022, down from 1.060. Advice on where to go from here? Did I get lucky this time? Should I wait for it to ferment drier? WILL it ferment drier? Should I rack to cherries sooner than target FG?

 

[TheZymurgist]

Let it sit a couple days, and take another gravity reading to see whether it's done or not. 1.022 isn't bad at all, so I'd let it ride. Don't rack it until fermentation is complete, but once it is, you can throw it on the cherries. That's one of the great things about darker beers and IPAs, they're much more forgiving.

 

[TheMerkle]

Sounds good. Next up is the cherries themselves. I've done my homework and all but decided that I will freeze ten pounds of fresh cherries, then sanitize in whiskey and rack onto that. Any suggestions there?

 

[sweetcell]

It might be a good idea to leave it on the yeast for a little bit. I ready in the book 'Yeast' that they will clean up a little after themselves once fermentation is done.
(...)
Age will definitely be on your side with this one, too. I bet after about six months, this will have mellowed out.

yeast clean up certain by-products of fermentation but fusel alcohols aren't one of them. if the yeast produce them they won't be re-absorbed.

fusels don't really mellow out with time. this is why fermentation temp control is so important: get it wrong and there isn't a lot you can do to fix the situation.

Maybe it was a misconception I had established on my own? I was under the impression that the longer the time between the end of the boil, and pitching the yeast, the higher the risk of infection.

there is an increased risk of infection with a wait before pitching, but you need to balance this risk vs. the negative impacts of pitching too warm (fusel alcohols, bad esters, potential of incomplete fermentation because of falling temps, etc.).