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Wanted to experiment with some dried yeasts I haven't used before so brewed a simple SMaSH with MO and Goldings. Mashed at 65.6 for 75 mins boiled for 1 hour

Using:

1 = Muntons Gold

2 = Mauribrew

3 = Windsor

4 = Gervin

All ale yeasts of course. All re hydrated exactly the same, with each 4 litres of wort inoculated with 20 % of the total yeast yielded from the rehydration. Set at 20c.

All comments welcomed.




24 Hours later: Already there are colour differences

An expensive brew then with 4 packets of dried yeast!

Did you through the rest of the yeast away?

No, otherwise you would be right. I have got them in 4 plastic vials and placed in the fridge. I will use them in upcoming brews but probably make a starter as it could be a few weeks and more than 1 week would weaken them. Having said that they were only a little more than a liquid yeast.

Great experiment.

It is and I have to keep checking, will post a 24 hours on post later today. I've not fermented in clear glass before so it is interesting to see what goes into the fermentor, particularly the amount of cold break (I use a plate chiller).

orlando wrote:It is and I have to keep checking, will post a 24 hours on post later today. I've not fermented in clear glass before so it is interesting to see what goes into the fermentor, particularly the amount of cold break (I use a plate chiller).

I changed my fermentation vessels after my "Yeast" experiment in demi johns. Nothing is picked up from the FV on either flavour or aroma, every test seemed cleaner and crisper than my normal brews.

I have been concerned over the cold break going into FV also via the plate chiller. It would be great food during a brett fermentation but I am not convinced by the argument that its ok.

I've not used anything other than a plate chiller so can't say if there is a difference to the beer based on cold break going into the fermentor. Views vary, as usual, but I would love to see an experiment where half the wort is chilled via a plate chiller and the other half by IC. My money would be on a blind tasting wouldn't show up any obvious difference.

Nice experiment Orlando,

Look forward to hearing the results.
I did a 4 way SMaSH recently with 4 different hops. Unfortunately the temp got up to 30° for the first three days fermentation and I wasn't there !
Down the drain it went...

I did have a slight wobble with temp with mine. I forgot to reset my STC 1000 after it had controlled the HLT set at 80, fortunately I noticed it in what I think was reasonable time when I saw it registering 24 in the fridge. Had a look this morning and saw that at least one of the DJ's looks like it is already passed high krausen, don't know whether to be worried or not.

It's been a very fast ferment with 1,2 & 3 about the same stage but 4 still has a slight krausen.

Picture Taken on Monday.

nice experiment. what was the recipe? I know smash but maris otter i'm guessing with... what? fuggles or golding or something? Just out of interest. Being honest this looks like a fairly solid test

Goldings. My CBA branch have a SMaSH theme for January so as I had been planning to do this experiment for awhile decided to take out the crystal from my original recipe. I'm using Crisp's MO for the grist. I took hydrometer readings yesterday and they are all about 1.014-16 and already showing different characteristics (I always sample the sample jar ). I would love to do the same thing with hops but don't have 4 pans big enough, let alone suitable for an induction hob, to try it.

Aye I'd be interested to see how you get on and what they turn out like.
Out of interest, how are you temp controlling the fridge with 4 separate johns in? Have you just attached it to one or are you monitoring air temp? I quite fancy chucking a demijohn in the fridge under my FV but hadn't figured out a good way of doing it without one or the other being too cold/hot
Cooky

Just attached it to one insulated with some bubble wrap and then taped to the side. I do this with FV's and it is so close as makes little difference. I only have 25 litres to worry about but clearly 50 or more and you probably need a little more sophistication, after all yeast can generate a lot of heat themselves, the more bulk the greater the problem. For us it is getting it up to temp for commercials keeping it down, but even your plans suggest this might be an issue for you, particularly in the summer months.

Well a quick update on the progress of this. There was little more fermentation left in any of them so I decided to cool them all to try and drop as much yeast as I could because of the decision not to fine, don't want anything extraneous interfering with the yeast flavours. I have to say they didn't drop particularly well still some quite large bits of trub floating at the surfaces of the brews. The colour looks to be fairly uniform and all but one appears to have thrown a similar amount of sediment apart from number 1 (Muntons Gold), looks like it has thrown almost double the other 3 suggesting a particularly vigorous & viable strain. All now bottled and awaiting there final code allocation so even I don't know which is which. Assuming I remember I will feedback the results after the Norwich CBA meeting in January.