Last Sunday I transferred my fermenting beer into a secondary, dry-hopped, capped it off, and put it back in the closet. Then I went out of state for a few days. I came home last night. 6 days in primary carboy, then another 5 days in secondary. This morning, I came downstairs to a strong smell. Seems to be emanating from the closet. Should I be worried? :-\
What do you mean by “capped it off”? If you sealed the secondary without a way for pressure to release (like an airlock) and the beer was still fermenting then you might have blown up your fermentor. You can quickly resolve that issue by looking in the closet.
It was California Ale White Labs WLP001 yeast added at 68-70 F - the primary fermentation went awesome, and the gravity reading I took at secondary transfer was 1.014ish. The color and taste were both excellent, I thought.
Yes, I meant Pressure-release cap.
Thanks!
so what did you see when you opened the closet? or is this a Schrodinger’s cat thing? Until I open the door the beer is both good and bad.
The transfer to secondary probably slowed your fermentation down as you removed much of the yeast from the beer. It then got going again and fermented some more hence the smell.
Also, I’m still not 100% clear, was the fermenter sealed or was there an airlock?
What does the beer look like? Have you tasted it?
FWIW, when I used to transfer to secondary to dry hop (I dry hop in keg now), I waited a couple weeks until the beer was done fermenting and dropped fairly clear before transferring. I can’t see any need to transfer actively fermenting beer, and as mentioned it can actually disrupt your beer from fermenting/attenuating fully.
It was an airlock with some water in it. Sorry, this is my very first ever homebrew. It’s an Organic IPA - all grain.
not sure how to upload an image… but it tasted excellent when I sampled during transfer to secondary.
I’m going to guess there was additional fermentation in the secondary and/or that the hops knocked some CO2 out of suspension and that’s where the yeasty smell came from.
I’ve had some beers (typically Belgian) that smell strongly of yeast in the fermenter but once they drop clear and are in the glass no worries.
Since it’s your first ever, the recommendation to wait and be patient before dry hopping and/or transferring is one of the very best you will ever get. Patience is important, don’t rush the beer.
No worries, Jason. We all started somewhere. I wish this forum had been around when I started - there’s always somebody here to help. Here’s a link on posting pics here :
https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=20.0
Awesome! Thanks guys! I will create a folder online to host my beer related pics.
Cheers!
I know there were Bulletin Boards (BBS for us old people) but I don’t recall even using e-mail back then.
Maybe on America On-line. But I don’t remember too much about that service. Dial-up, baby. You were hot if you had a 1200 baud modem.
Oh yeah, 1200 was cooking ! But the info (and variety of ingredients)has gotten so much better. Different ballgame.
I used the rec.crafts.brewing Usenet group when I started brewing in 98. “Met” Mike Dixon there.
I remember using the old Cat’s Meow database, RealBeer page among others, scouring for recipes and ideas. Pretty hit and miss, to say the least !
You guys are cracking me up! I’ve been working in tech/software/internet for 22+ years. I remember the speeds… crazy!
these were from the transfer day… I will try to get a decent pic of the beer now.
let’s try this
looking at the pics I would say it was not done fermenting so the smell is just continued fermentation.
I am really quite impatient so I wait ~ 1 week and take a gravity reading. This is almost always too soon but I do it anyway. Then I wait ~ 1 more week and take another one. As I said, that first one was almost always too soon and I will see a drop in gravity between the two. So I wait another week and take another sample. it’s usually the same as the second sample. Now it’s time to do whatever you’re going to do next. I usually cold crash and keg the beer at this point but you could transfer to secondary and add dry hops, oak chips, fruit, a whole dead chicken, whatever.
Cat’s Meow had some of the worst recipes ever conceived.
I had that printed out at one point when I was trying to make mead and my internet access was not at home.
No joke ! I’m hard pressed to think of one recipe that was better than decent. ‘Ale Yeast’ , Cascade, and crystal/caramel in about every beer recipe there for a while.
Good Gawd, Denny. I’ve been brewing for longer than you. Now I feel… about as old as I already felt.
However, the first on-line recipe source I ever used was Skotrats. The Rat Cellar or something like that.
Prior to that it was all Papazian’s books and BYO.