I made what I hope will turn out to be a Dusseldorf Alt about a week ago. With a slightly higher OG at 1.065, it fermented at 58F for a week down to 1.012. Tasting the sample, it’s pretty sulfury. I heard this may be typical for lager styles, and cooler temperatures in general. I’ve since increased the temperature to 63F to get it to finish out.
I don’t secondary, so was just wondering how long I should let it sit in primary (assuming it’s done fermenting and crashed to 32F) before bottling? If I bottle too soon, would there be a greater likelihood for a sulfury beer?
I think the only real way of knowing for sure would be to test every few days, but is there a typical period of lagering for these types of beers? I’d prefer to get this carboy out of my chest freezer asap so that I can get something new in there!
I would let it sit another week to clean up before moving it to condition. This is a style that does benefit from a secondary/lager for a month or so before bottling.
what size starter did you make? sounds like your yeast got a little stressed.
Starter was pretty big. Pitched one packet into 1L starter on stir-plate, then stepped up to 2.5L starter on a stir-plate. Did some good oxygenation, as well. Fermentation started in about 2.5 hours. I even roused the fermenter a bit every day based on some discussions we’ve had on this forum recently. I think some age may help. Maybe this yeast is prone to sulfur?
Will definitely let it sit for at least two more weeks. Probably won’t lager it as, unfortunately, I don’t have the space to do that and keep brewing. I’ll chalk this up as a learning experience, if anything, and point to the part of the bjcp style guideline that says “Some yeast strains may impart a slight sulfury character.”
it definitely is - some conditioning will help mete that out. but if its there when you bottle it, it likely will stay, so the longer you can bulk condition, the better.
+1 on another week in the primary, then lagering for a month or so. Even if you’re not able to lager in the secondary, and have to bottle it up, cold aging/conditioning in the bottles after carbonating will make a difference. Bottle it up, let it carbonate, then put the bottles in the fridge and try to forget about them for a month. Or, better yet, try one each week to see how the cold aging affects the beer over time.
Don’t worry about sulfur during primary fermentation. I’d only worry about it if it sticks around after primary fermentation. I use this yeast as well, but I don’t remember if it threw off sulfur or not.
I’m using this one right now around 56F. Just starte warming it up to finish off fermentation. Haven’t smelled any sulfur. I’ll have to taste it when it goes to the secondary. ;D
Honestly, everyone knows homebrewers are all terrible people. But seriously, before I started going on homebrew forums, I had no idea who you were and didn’t know what to think about a yeast called “Denny’s Fav 50” except that it might have something to do with moons over my hammy. Now that I am familiar with you and your fine recipes, I think it’s really cool that a prominent homebrewer was honored by Wyeast that way. But, given the strain’s likely origin from the yeast bank of my alma mater, I think, had Wyeast called 1450, “Davis Aggie Ale” or “American Ale III” or something like that, I would have tried it years earlier and enjoyed its fine, “dry-but-malty” beers for that much longer (though in those days my temp control and brewing knowledge were limited, so I may have sworn off that yeast prematurely the way I swore off PacMan due to my own mistakes).
Now, a real question about 1007: how versatile is this yeast? Could I use it to produce an “American-style” pale ale? I have a big slurry ready when I transfer my alt (fermented at 58, then raised to 62 after a week) to secondary/lagering. I was thinking about using this opportunity to brew something in the vein of Widmer’s Drifter pale ale (a pale ale with a judicious amount of Summit and Nelson Sauvin). Having never used 1007 (though I have used WLP029 and WLP011), would it likely produce a nice beer with this recipe?:
10 lbs TF Optic
8 oz Simpson’s Medium Crystal
8 oz CaraVienne
.25 oz Summit (18.5% AA) 60 min
.5 oz Nelson Sauvin (11% AA) 15 min
.75 oz Summit (18.5% AA) 5 min
.5 oz Nelson Sauvin (11% AA) 5 min
1 oz Summit (18.5% AA) 0 min
1 oz Nelson Sauvin (11% AA) 0 min
Mash at 150 for 60 min
Wyeast 1007 German Ale
Ferm at 58-60F
Likely OG 1.059, Likely FG
Since I have been getting 80% efficiency lately, I am expecting this to be a bigger beer than Drifter, at around 1.059 and around 40 IBU - on the frontier between APA and IPA. My other option is to use US-05, though I would prefer to use half a fresh yeast cake if it would be at all appropriate. This beer will likely spend months in secondary before being dry-hopped with either summit or NS or some combination thereof.
Ok. I just realized that I may have over-pitched tremendously. While using the mr.malty pitch rate calculator, I did a 1 L starter to get about 200 billion cells, and then pitched that into a 3L starter. (All with stir-plate.) My mistake was that when stepping up I should have upped the # of vials slider to two (for two billion cells). Instead of pitching 349 billion cells, I pitched somewhere along the lines of 513. On top of that, I oxygenated quite a bit. Would this have been a likely cause for my sulfur problem?
Sorry skyler, I don’t have an answer for you based on experience, but I’d say go for it!
Heck, yeah! I refer to it as “German 1056”. It works great in any beer where you want a clean yeast character. Several months back I recommended it to a guy for a dry stout. I heard back from him recently that it made an outstanding stout. I’ve used it for APA and IPA with great results.
And I SWEAR to you I had nothing to do with the naming of 1450!
But seriously, before I started going on homebrew forums, I had no idea who you were and didn’t know what to think about a yeast called “Denny’s Fav 50” except that it might have something to do with moons over my hammy. Now that I am familiar with you and your fine recipes, I think it’s really cool that a prominent homebrewer was honored by Wyeast that way. But, given the strain’s likely origin from the yeast bank of my alma mater, I think, had Wyeast called 1450, “Davis Aggie Ale” or “American Ale III” or something like that, I would have tried it years earlier and enjoyed its fine, “dry-but-malty” beers for that much longer (though in those days my temp control and brewing knowledge were limited, so I may have sworn off that yeast prematurely the way I swore off PacMan due to my own mistakes).