everything that could go wrong did tonight. i have about 4 extract and partial mash kits sitting around waiting to brew, with my yeast in the fridge. 3 of the 4 kits share the same, dry, safale 05 yeast. my tripel had the liquid WYEAST 3787 trappist HG. okay…so funny circumstances; my liquid yeast pack got activated accidentally by a lb of butter being set on top of it this afternoon. I was planning to brew the midnight beatdown wheaten porter tonight, but at the last minute discovered, several lbs of frozen raspberries from the garden this summer in the freezer. i decided to brew my american wheat extract kit, with the intention to pasturize the raspberries and add them to the fermentor. well with my liquid yeast being activated i didnt want to just throw it out so heres what happenend. i brewed the american wheat( supposed to be OG 1.042) as per the recipe, also using my immersion wort chiller for the first time, i fricken love that thing already! so i brewed the wheat ale according to the recipe, but as i was boiling the wort i was simultaneously pasurizing the raspberries. i added them to a small pot and mashed them with a potato masher. started them on low heat and got them to 160 degrees… let them simmer at 160 - 180 degrees for about 25 minutes just in time for the end of the wort boil. i cooled the wort with the immersion chiller which took only 10 minutes! compared to almost an hour on the last 2 brews with water/ice baths. i added the wort to my fermentor, added the raspberries to my fermentor ( both using a strainer ) added top up water to 5.25 gallons to accout for the sludge at the bottom this time around, and took a temp and OG reading. temp 74, OG 1.047. i decided since i was going to use this HG yeast i would add some sugar to up the OG. added about 3 cups brown sugar, boiled in a cup of water. added to fermentor. shook around. Temp 74, OG 1.054. not enough gravity. boiled another cup of water with white cane sugar and increased the OG to 1.063ish…inbetween 1.062 and 1.064 with a temp of 71. aerated again, and pitched the yeast at a temp of 69.
if youre still reading, i could really use some advice. the kit i brewed was the american wheat. which was a suggested primary of 2 weeks, then bottle 2 weeks. i upped the OG quite a bit, and used a yeast meant for HG beer, and i made my wort an HG beer. The yeast was meant for my tripel, which required a 2 week primary followed by a 2 - 3 month secondary, then bottle. im really wondering where i stand with this frankenstein brew…im sure if i dont get any feedback i will probably primary 2 weeks, secondary for 2 weeks and see where im at, and go from there. but really any advice would be MUCH appreciated!
PS i also had my first boil over incident tonight…lol. i turned my back for a second, being complacent, as ive done this a couple times and thought i was safe…nope. the watched pot may never boil, but the unwatched pot will always boil over…indeed.
Let’s start at the top. For all the folks getting a brewing kit for Christmas from their loved ones, yeast don’t just die and have to be thrown away. That HG yeast would have been fine 2 months or more down the road. Because of the higher gravity of the beer you wanted to make, a starter should be made to increase the yeast cell count. This is technically needed for most beers, but not completely necessary. Meaning your beer won’t be ruined by not doing it, but would be better if you did.
Think of it like the old “friendship” bread/sourdough breads. The yeast go dormant and sugars are added to wake them up. Same with beer yesast.
From there, it’s going to be difficult to reuse this yeast for a new beer because you added the fruit to the primary. So to separate the yeast from all the crud (unless you bagged the fruit) will be a challenge. I wish you well with that task. Fruit is best to be added in a secondary vessel. The fruit flavors are more likely to be in the beer and not be driven off with the massive amount of CO2 generated in the primary fermentor.
How long before bottling? You beer really isn’t that high of a gravity. But then we can’t be certain you had a good mixing of the sugar added. I would let the beer tell you when it’s ready. Meaning let it go for 2 weeks (like any beer I would do). If then you have a steady FG reading go ahead and bottle it.
Do your best to wash the junk out of the yeast and reuse it if you like. Washing the yeast involves adding boiled/cooled water to the yeast. Shaking it and allowing it to sit for 5-10 minutes to allow the solids to drop out. Decant off the liquid and repeat. After 2-3 times you should have a fairly clean yeast cake. From there, about a week before brewing your HG beer make a 3/4-1 gallon starter to get the cell count up.
Good luck. Remember, this to shall be beer!
edit: I would try to keep the temp of that beer as close to 60* as possible. That HG yeast will add some Belgium/trappist ale esters that may compliment your creation. Or it might make it the most wonder full beer you have ever had. An you won’t be able to re create it.
3787 is a real nice yeast, it will give you an interesting take on a raspberry wheat beer.
Next time, add the raspberries to the secondary. Putting fruit in primary gasses out a lot of the aromas. And you definitely don’t need to pasteurize the fruit, freezing knocks down the bugs and pitching to secondary where the ABV is already there, means its unlikely to have a problem. That said, fruit beers are notoriously unstable so if you have good results let us know. My wife loves fruit beers, I make base beer styles and she adds fruit flavorings (sugar-free syrups).
thank you. ill post how it turns out.
update on this brew: at 1.5 weeks in bottle i was ready to write this off…i just cracked one today at just over 3 weeks and its fantastic. at first it had a strong apple/acetaldehyde flavour…after another 2 weeks it has a faint flavor and smell of banana or banana bread, slightly sweet, great carbonation and it just fantastic. honestly. goes to show what aging can do. i didnt think that apple flavor was going away; im amazed and pleasantly surprised. the raspberries i added arent apparant, but im sure they affected the overall flavor or at least the gravity in some way. im sure this will be better with more age but im just in shock. i tried one today on a whim just cuz two of my other brews were almost 2 weeks in the bottle and i threw they all in the fridge last night to taste today. all in all this belgian wheat, the midnight beatdown, and the american rye kit that i tweaked a lot are all awesome. trying to round up some beer drinkers for the weekend to try my new creations.
to be technical; i ended up doing 18 days primary, 8 days secondary and 3 weeks bottle at this point. the trappist high gravity from wyeast seems to sit on top forever, and flocculate forever…i have another brew using this yeast in the primary at the moment, and last time i kept thinking it was subsiding, id check it the next day and there would be 6 inches of krausen still…anyway the original brew finished at 1.012 and i carbonated to about 2.8 co2.
A lot of the Belgian strains make a large krausen htat sits forever on top. I start swirling the yeast after a week or ten days, that helps it to drop out once things are done.
Glad you had a good outcome. Putting fruit in secondary makes it more likely that some aroma is apparent.
