Very new to brewing and having a great time. I tried brewing a “Bohemian pilsner” and the recipe calls for adding a package of Wyeast just prior to bottleing. I’m worried I will blow the tops off. I kept out one gallon of wort before I pitched thee first yeast, and have it air tight in the fidge. I have the rest in primary for 2 weeks at 45 degrees. I plan on racking to the secondary for 2 more weeks. On bottleing day my plan was to take out the gallon of cold wort let it return to room temp. Dump wort and package of 2124 Wyeast to the bottleing bucket then rack in the beer.
it might. especially adding 20% new wort and new yeast. where you get instructions like that? :o
and, no matter how air tight or sanitized you kept your gallon that you held out, if it was in the fridge for 2 weeks, and wasn’t pressure canned, I would be concerned about contamination.
I guess I tried to be too slick for my own good… The directions call for adding 1.4 cups light DME with the yeast and I thought I could just use some wort instead. I read that the old German way was to add wort back at the end to condition and not add sugar. Again the learning curve is a circle here. Do you think if I boil the wort first then add it back I would be alright? Should I punt? Now I have 4 gallons of Pilsner in the fridge at 45 degrees. I need to rack it to the secondary this weekend. Can i save this beer
The method you are referring to is kraeusening. It involves adding a certain amount of actively fermenting wort from a new batch of beer to condition the lager ready to be bottled.
Adding wort is called speise, and adding at full yeast activity is called Kauesening.
It turns out Kai has a page on that. No suprise as it is a traditional technique in production lager breweries that have plenty of both on hand. Krausening with fresh yeast is said to clean up many things left by the first part of fermentation.
I’d be the first one to tell you go for it but even I would be suspect of storing wort in the fridge for more than one week. But our friends over in Germany do that all the time.
If I Kraeusen my beer or want to add Speise I freeze the wort and boil it before it is added to the beer.
Eric, you may want to try this for future beers. I still think it is a very elegant way of carbonating a beer. Besides the link that Jeff posted check out this one: Kraeusening - German brewing and more it details the process. There is also a spreadsheet that does the calculations for you. And to top it off, if you do the fast ferment test to determine the terminal gravity you can even bottle beer that has not completed fermentation as long as there is not more unfermented sugar than you need for carbonation.
After reading posts going to websites and reading the “Brewers Bible” I have decided to go for it.
I have my wort in the freezer, in two weeks I will boil it cool it to 75 pitch some fresh Wyeast.
Then rack the pilsner to the bottle bucket and bottle. I will post results for those that care. Thanks again for the help
It could be due to a couple of things. First, 2 weeks is a darn short primary for a lager so maybe it wasn’t enough time for the yeast to reduce the diacetyl. Also, your bottling procedure is a bit suspect. Diacetyl can be caused by an infection, so there’s the possibility that your stored wort was infected. Or maybe the diacetyl is due to the fermentation of the wort that you used for bottling.
I racked my Dunkel to secondary today after only 10 days worth of primary fermentation. The beer has 1 Plato left to go and I’ll give it a maturation rest at 68F for a few days.
But yes, in most cases less than two weeks is a bit short. I think your problem is premature bottling. But not all is lost. I assume that there is still lots of viable yeast in these bottles. Just move them to a warm spot for a week or longer and the diacetyl should go away. This will also help with the carbonation of the beer. Once the diacetyl is gone you can store the bottles cold.
I agree that it’s possible to be done more quickly. I was recently surprised by a dunkel that fermented out completely in 10 days and by 2 weeks tasted almost as if it had been lagered and was ready to drink. But in my brewhouse, at least, that’s a rare occurrence.
Does anyone know how much yeast is sufficient for krausening if your trying to reduce diacetyl ? (I’m not concerned with carbonating the beer at this stage)
I cant seem to find a patching rate estimate for this. I have heard “make a starter” but I have also heard “we are not trying to get yeast growth”. Both true I suppose, but still, how much yeast is needed to do this clean up operation ? 100 billion cells (one fresh pack) per 5 gallons ? and is this assuming no growth in the starter ?
