I have kegged a pilsner and go to tap it, with a noticable diacetyl , buttery flavor.
I have a second kegged that has not been force carbed yet. Can i do anything with either
My thought was to take the uncarbed keg, warm it up to 70F and put maybe a champaign yeast
to clean up the diacetyl?
Looking for suggestion on saving or correcting the beer.
From what I understand, krausening the beers should get them cleaned up pretty effectively.
If done well, it will also carb the beer.
Worked for me more than once.
Never done before, any suggestions on the play by play. Was going to consider rigging up a blow off tube to my keg and just re hydrate and pitch into keg. Any suggestions on exact yeast. Is there a bunch of champagne yeast options.
Down Falls with in the keg? too much spend yeast and crud left over in the keg?
I have krausened many batches. You want to use either the same yeast you did it with originally or with something neutral (US-05 has worked for me if I don’t have any yeast left from the batch). Basically, you want to get something up to high krausen and then put it in the keg, you don’t need a ton of it but it does need to be active and moving. If you use a different yeast, you might have it attenuate down lower than the original yeast would have and change the profile of the beer.
I usually do something like half a liter of wort @ 1.035 and some yeast, give it an hour or two to get going (krausen is up) and then dump it in.
You will get some junk in the bottom of the keg but it will come out in a few pints after it all drops out.
Also, you won’t need a blow off tube. In fact, you can just seal up the keg and let it carbonate naturally from the yeast’s action, just make sure it doesn’t get too crazy high.
You would need about 3oz of DME to carb up to 2.3-2.5. I’d use about a pint as mentioned above.
One thing I didn’t mention, the keg needs to be warm (70F maybe) so the yeast stay awake and doing their thing. After you start it, it happens pretty quick. I think mine are usually done in 3 or 4 days. Giving it a little extra time won’t hurt, and then chill back down for clearing and serving.
Thanks a bunch guys, this is why i am apart of the home brewers association.
I will give this a try and see you in Minneapolis…
I did 3 test batches of pils malt (American, Canadian and German) recently and kegged all 3 beers only to discover that 2 of the 3 had very obvious signs of diacetyl. I was pretty bummed because I felt I could possibly fixed them had they still been in the fermentor. I let them all sit outr for a week at room temp and the diacetyl completely went away. I was pretty shocked because I had previously argued on this forum wiotyh a few folks that you had to have active fermentation to remove diacetyl. I was pretty pleased to see that I was wrong. Not saying it will work in your case but you may be pleasantly surprised.
Not sure the champagne yeast will do anything.
Yeah, that’s why I’m a big fan of just letting them get to room temp for a week and RDWHAHB.
Easy, peasy, No stress. Plus it keeps the O2 Nazi’s at bay.
What is an O2 Nazi?
A skinhead whose stomping grounds are primarily in North Greenwich London?
I think he must mean the yeast are the O2 Nazi’s. They live to eradicate oxygen at any possible chance and do so with unrestrained determination. Any by leaving the keg alone you are not introducing any extra O2 Nazi’s, thus you’re keeping them “at bay”.
That’s all I can think :-*