I've now got a couple of brews with the same Opshaug under my belt, each time top-cropping, saving, and growing the yeast before pitching it on brew day. It's been an interesting learning experience and actually way easier than I was anticipating - kudos to the kind folk on 'ere who answered my endless barrage of n00b questions.
Right now I'm fermenting two vessels with Opshaug and thought I'd share some observations. One is a kit beer, Bure Gold, and since my ferment fridge is tied up with the other brew I decided to use Kveik instead of the included yeast. That first brew is an all-grain pale ale effort that I clobbered together from bits of leftover inventory, again I'm using the Opshaug I stole from my Vienna Lager a few weeks back. What's interesting is that both of these share similar characteristics which may interest some folk:
Right now I'm fermenting two vessels with Opshaug and thought I'd share some observations. One is a kit beer, Bure Gold, and since my ferment fridge is tied up with the other brew I decided to use Kveik instead of the included yeast. That first brew is an all-grain pale ale effort that I clobbered together from bits of leftover inventory, again I'm using the Opshaug I stole from my Vienna Lager a few weeks back. What's interesting is that both of these share similar characteristics which may interest some folk:
- The fermentation curves from my Tilts appear to be an almost straight line for the past few days, whereas I'm used to seeing it drop steeply at first and then become more shallow. Both brews are past their predicted FG and show no signs of slowing down. I'm amazed and slightly scared.
- Neither brew 'took off' in the way which I'd expected from Kveik - in fact I'd say that between 16 and 20 hours passed before visible signs of fermentation.
- Both brews show a 'hiccup' after about a day, as if gravity dropped too quickly too fast, and then recovered, then dropped again. Had this just happened on one vessel I'd write it off as some yeast interfering with the Tilt's readings, but both brews did it around the same time after pitching; one in the Fermzilla and one in the 25 litre SS Brewtech bucket. I find that really interesting.