Monday, January 26, 2009

oops.

Well, in the attempt to get the temperature to rise a little I set a small space heater up to Abbot and was planning on leaving it for about 20 minutes and then turn it off and do that on and off for the next few days, but on Saturday night after setting up the heater I fell asleep (AHHHH) I didn't wake up til around 4am and I ran straight to the kitchen to find poor Abbot TERRIBLY over heated :( I'm hoping that this won't have too much effect on the beer...

I got the Pale bottled yesterday though. I was kinda worried about infection because it looked kinda like it had some bad floaties while it was in the secondary. When I tried the sample it smelled a little bit sour, but the sample was taken out of a beaker that I measure the gravity in that hadn't been washed very well, if at all. I'm using that as an excuse and keeping my fingers crossed for the final product. In hopes of getting away from this stupid occational infected beers trend I'm going to be getting or building a immersion chiller. That way I can cool the beer down much faster keeping it exposed to the nasty mean yucky out side air between the boil and yeast pitching time for a much shorter period of time. I would have gotten one sooner, but most immersion chillers are made for outdoor brewers and hook up to garden hoses. Others are set up to attach to faucets, but living in a wierd old hotel type complex built in the 20s (i think?) the faucet isn't really normal... BUT I think after my trip to the hardware store I have devised a way to make it work. So, here in the picture is the now lonely other beers. I think i'm going to rack over Abbot on Wednesday and then bottle it in about 5 days or so.

Beer!

1 comment:

Mark (the Brush Valley Brewer) said...

I'm not an expert, but I understand that most of the yeast activity that creates esters and fusels (the bad aroma/flavor contributors) that you get from fermenting warm actually happen in the first 48 hours. I think you said krausen already fell, so you might be okay... assuming you didn't get it *so* hot that you killed the yeast.

Keep the faith. No matter what, it's still beer. ;-)