Hobo's Delight, recipe v1.01 (II)

The first installment of my Hobo Delight beer recipe focused on cooking the wort and getting the fermentation started; this part will cover the fermentation.

In that last post I stated that fermentation should start within 12 hours, or 24 hours at the most. Mine started after six, and had really taken off after about 10 hours. This was not only faster than in my first patch, it was faster than any batch I remember from a former life in Florida. I figure it may have been faster than the last batch because the ambient temperature was a little higher, and that it was faster than in Florida because I am now using a different kind of yeast. That is always a thing about brewing: Minute things can make seemingly big differences. Luckily, those seemingly big differences rarely have baring on the final outcome.

Well, this particular fermentation not only started fast, it finished fast as well: Three days must be the fastest fermentation ever heard of! And the stop of fermentation was not gradual either: It was still going strong at night, but had ceased entirely the next morning. Again, this is not what I typically see. The normal would be for fermentation to mostly stop, but linger on at a low level for at least another day. I just put it on yet another seemingly big difference that would not make a difference down the road.

Honestly, it is not the quick fermentation I worry about: The window of opportunity for bad things to take over and spoil your beer is from the moment you take the wort off the stove, until the alcohol concentration in the fermenting wort becomes too high for those bad things to survive or even thrive. Yes, there is also a chance that the wort does for some reason not ferment all the way (suddenly all the yeast dying- is that possible in a sealed off carboy kept at a reasonable temperature?) but since my fermentation had been vigorous the days before I figured my beer would be good.

After five days my carboy still looked very much like it did after three: There was a thick 3/4 inch layer of yeast sludge at the bottom, and nearly 5 1/2 gallons of dull looking brown beer on top of it. The yeast was no longer producing but lots of it was still very much in suspension and without any apparent intent of setting any time soon. I therefore decided to add a quick second fermentation step to my process.The purpose of a second fermentation process is mostly to clear the beer. Sometimes, sometimes adjuncts like extra hops or spices are added to enhance flavor or aroma but I had no plans of doing that. So here is what I did do:

• Equipment:
  The very carboy and airlock that is currently holding the fermented wort.
  A bucket big enough to hold hold all the wort currently in the carboy. A six gallon brew bucket will do fine.
  A piece of plastic hose to siphon the wort (or green beer, now) from the carboy into the bucket and back. Home brew stores sell auto-siphons which make the process indeed more convenient but it is easy to get by just with the hose.
• Extra ingredients:
  None
• Disinfect the bucket and the hose. I use the same 1/2 cup of bleach to five gallons of water solution as when I prepared the wort. Rinse both to get all remnants of the bleach off.
• Rig the carboy and bucket such that the carboy is way higher than the bucket. Kitchen counter to kitchen floor is a combination that works for me.
• Siphon the beer from the carboy into the bucket. When using hose then the hose needs to be primed with clear (i.e. unbleached!) water. When using an auto-siphon then follow the instructions that came with the equipment. In any case, leave the bottom layer of the thickest sludge in the carboy- we don't want it anymore.
• Rinse the carboy carefully. I do that in the bath tub, dumping the yeast sludge into the toilet next to it. Make sure to clean the inside of the carboy off remnant yeast and hops residues. I don't bother bleaching it as the inside was only in contact with the very beer that's about to return to it.
• Reverse the positions of the (now full) bucket and the (now empty) carboy: Bucket goes on the counter, carboy on the floor.
• Siphon the beer from the bucket back into the carboy. There should not be much of a sludge layer at the bottom of the bucket yet, so there is nothing to worry.
• Replace the airlock, return the carboy to its hiding place.

Often, turning of the green beer will result in some extra fermentation depending on how many unfermented sugars are left in the beer. In my case the extra fermentation was slight and barely lasted through the rest of the evening.The main part is that the beer should start clearing. In my case it took two days for most of the suspended yeast to settle at the bottom, resulting in a new layer of sludge but with much clearer and much darker beer on top of it.