Hi all,
I have recently moved over to the dark side and am now on my second AG brew. The first went well.....in the end and produced a really good The Rev James clone ale which I was over the moon with. My second one was brewed last week on a mini pilot brewery I put together that will produce between 2 and 4 gallons in separate single gallon demi johns. I did this in order to experiment with different recipes in small batches - dry hopping, different primary ferment lengths, different yeasts etc.
Anyway, enough of all the preamble my real question is on the fermentation characteristics of Safale S-04. I used it for the first time on this brew and am not sure if it is progressing as it should! The brew went well I think:
Mash
1.6kg Pale Malt - Mashed for 90 minutes with 4 lts strike water @ 76 degrees and achieved an initial mash temp of 66.1. Dropped to 65.2 after 90 mins.
Sparge
Did a batch sparge with 8 lts 86 degree liquor. Grain temp increased to 77 degrees and managed 81% efficiency.
Boil
Boiled for 90 mins with Centennial and Cascade for bittering and more Cascade for aroma at 15 minutes.
Crash cooled with a plate chiller to 22 degrees and ran off 9 lts of wort split equally between 2 demi-johns. Pitched 3g dry Safale S-04 into each demi-john.
Within 3 hours the light brown krausen started to form and within 8 hours it was covering the wort and producing bubbles through each of the air locks. The ferment seemed fairly vigorous to me with bubbles coming through at a rate of 1 every 2-3 seconds for a few days. Then it gradually slowed to where now the bubbles are approx 1 every 1-2 minutes.
However, whilst the krausen formed very fast and the ferment seemed to me quite vigorous it never turned into a foamy rocky head that I have had with other yeasts. At one point I saw some white foam below the surface (easy to see this through a glass demi-john) but it never broke through and subsided within a day or two. The head remains 1-1.5 cm thick and still looks just as it did at the start of the ferment - pale brown and lumpy (a bit like chocolate mouse). It is currently on day 7 of primary fermentation.
So my question is, has anyone else had a similar experience with Safale S-04 or any other yeasts? Is this evidence of a slow ferment or something else? I'll take a hydro reading in the next day or two but I need to get a new turkey baster as it's a bugger getting samples out of the demi-johns!
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers!
I have recently moved over to the dark side and am now on my second AG brew. The first went well.....in the end and produced a really good The Rev James clone ale which I was over the moon with. My second one was brewed last week on a mini pilot brewery I put together that will produce between 2 and 4 gallons in separate single gallon demi johns. I did this in order to experiment with different recipes in small batches - dry hopping, different primary ferment lengths, different yeasts etc.
Anyway, enough of all the preamble my real question is on the fermentation characteristics of Safale S-04. I used it for the first time on this brew and am not sure if it is progressing as it should! The brew went well I think:
Mash
1.6kg Pale Malt - Mashed for 90 minutes with 4 lts strike water @ 76 degrees and achieved an initial mash temp of 66.1. Dropped to 65.2 after 90 mins.
Sparge
Did a batch sparge with 8 lts 86 degree liquor. Grain temp increased to 77 degrees and managed 81% efficiency.
Boil
Boiled for 90 mins with Centennial and Cascade for bittering and more Cascade for aroma at 15 minutes.
Crash cooled with a plate chiller to 22 degrees and ran off 9 lts of wort split equally between 2 demi-johns. Pitched 3g dry Safale S-04 into each demi-john.
Within 3 hours the light brown krausen started to form and within 8 hours it was covering the wort and producing bubbles through each of the air locks. The ferment seemed fairly vigorous to me with bubbles coming through at a rate of 1 every 2-3 seconds for a few days. Then it gradually slowed to where now the bubbles are approx 1 every 1-2 minutes.
However, whilst the krausen formed very fast and the ferment seemed to me quite vigorous it never turned into a foamy rocky head that I have had with other yeasts. At one point I saw some white foam below the surface (easy to see this through a glass demi-john) but it never broke through and subsided within a day or two. The head remains 1-1.5 cm thick and still looks just as it did at the start of the ferment - pale brown and lumpy (a bit like chocolate mouse). It is currently on day 7 of primary fermentation.
So my question is, has anyone else had a similar experience with Safale S-04 or any other yeasts? Is this evidence of a slow ferment or something else? I'll take a hydro reading in the next day or two but I need to get a new turkey baster as it's a bugger getting samples out of the demi-johns!
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers!
