The Bar Towel

So my pump died after the boil. I knew I should of bought a back-up pump. That will teach me to be cheap.

What are the chances that my batch doesnt have DMS flavours in it after air-cooling? Have you ever lucked out? Its an imperial harvest ale (going for 9.1 %) so high hop/alcohol could hide any DMS?

I think this is wishful thinking but trying to grab on to some hope here.

So dissappointing!

Define air cooling? I have done 80% of my batches by cooling in the sink/laundry tub in a bath of cold water.

56.2 litres of pipin hot wort bucket transfered (pump broken) in a sanitized stainless steel cylindro-conical fermentor. Closed-off and air-locked, then slowly cooling down in an air-conditioned 19.9'C basement in roughly 36 hours before yeast pitch.

Smelled okay when I pitched, and yeast activity seemed quite healthy.

Tried to taste it yesterday, but had so much yeast in my extract that it just tasted like fruit cake, not certain if I percieved DMS.

Don't you have a back-up immersion coil? 56 litres is a lot to cool, but an immersion copper coil would certainly help.

Swampale wrote:Don't you have a back-up immersion coil? 56 litres is a lot to cool, but an immersion copper coil would certainly help.

I did but it wasnt ready and setup to run on tap water. Will be next time.

Turns out I dont have DMS issues with the beer, but the same old overcooked sugars. I have bought a heating element to downgrade from 4.5 kW to 3.5 kW to try to fix the problem.

Cant believe I might actually rescue this batch!

So I found that the off-flavour is turning more and more like what I figure is dead yeast cells. Maybe an older yeast packet I used caused this? I cant decide whether I can taste any DMS or not. The yeast is still too active to tell.

Anyways, to try to rescue this batch, I've split my batch in 3 carboys for secondary fermentation.

Before Boil: 1.075
After Boil: 1.094
At transfer: 1.022, 9.6% alc/vol, and still going strong.

My first 10 litre carboy has 51g of a mix of freshly picked Cascade/Chinook/Goldings, and 100g of Jack Daniel's Barrel Wood Chips. My second has around 17.5 L and 101g of hops and clementine peel. The last one just has 102g of hops.

So this monster Imperial harvest Ale will have been quite the experience. Pump broke after Boil (which I fixed, yey!), yeast turs out old, and I get MUCH more gravity than I anticipated from adding 2 litres of Maple Syrup (from a friend's family sugarbush).

Thought I'd give an update.

The carboys are now sitting in my garage, dryhopping away.

I tested gravity from all 3, and the two 20 L batches are at 1.016, and my tiny 10 L is at a very nice 1.010. So this gives me a very confident 11.18% for my oak version, based on my final gravity, and the Jack Daniels wood chips really complemented well the high bitterness and alcohol.

The off taste at this level of alcohol is completely gone, or hidden by the flavours. Cant say the same for my other 2 batches, though the dry hopping did very well to balance the residual sweet.

I still can hope that a carbonated mouthfeel after bottle fermentation will complete this beer.

So Steve, our imperial harvest ale will have to turn into an annual thing.

If this tastes as good as it does now in the bottle, BOOM! Too bad I missed the TBW by a few weeks. Maybe next year it can be put off a bit to coincide with hop harvest.

iguenard wrote:So Steve, our imperial harvest ale will have to turn into an annual thing.

And I'll be better organized next year - harvest bbq and inspirational beer on Saturday, brewday on Sunday.