Worst Monday EVER…Brewing Is Off
So between the three of us, you’d think Joel, Jonathan or I could remember to pick up some yeast for a new batch of IPA. Turns out we can’t. The lack of a fermenting agent and the cold weather have depressed us so much that we’ve decided to cancel brewing. We’ll be back in the saddle next Monday…
Are you guys making a batch every Monday night?! Wow, and I thought I made alot of beer!
Ain’t it fun when Monday lives up to its reputation…
that blows. good reason to keep a pack or two of US-05 or knottingham in the fridge, though. week off never hurts, though, you’ll probably be that much more stoked next monday. great site, btw, fun reading!
You guys don’t re-use your yeasts? We’ve had great luck with bottling and re-using our yeasts the last 6 months or so. At first I was a little sketched out about the process because everyone makes it sound real simple, but it totally is. You just take the traub from the secondary and dump it into a sanitized beer bottle, put a bung on it and throw it in the fridge. After a week or so you cap up the bottle and it’s good. I just fired up a London Ale yeast from January without a problem. I had one from October that probably would have fired, but I dumped it because I was getting new yeasts once this batch was done.
Travis, we do reuse yeast but we have good reason to believe that our last two beers got some wild yeast up in there, so we want/need to start with some fresh yeast and a good starter.
I agree with Angry Ogre… Keep some dry yeast on hand. You’ll never be caught off-guard like this.
Or, since you guys now have your fancy conical fermenters, start harvesting your yeast into multiple containers, so that you have your own house yeast ready as a backup in case something happens to a batch.
The fateful “forgetting of the yeast.” We’ve definately done the same. By we I mean it was my fault but that’s neither here nor there. You plan and you plan and somehow it happens every now and again.