German Brewing

Racked our helles last night, ended up with about 2.5 kegs full (the third orange-topped keg is about 1/2 full). Gravity was 1.012 (OG 1.048)

We were missing a piece for a third spunding valve, but am not sure how well naturally carbing it would work anyway. Hopefully I can get it built and installed in the next few days anyway.

The purging recommended in the paper was a breeze.

The racking went really well and was actually easier than our prior method (no need to watch and make sure we don't overfill kegs).

As I told Bryan, the beer had an intense malty taste, but there was a good bit of yeast bite (WLP833) and sulfur, so I need to reserve judgment. One side of me feels as though if we 'aren't sure' if we have it, we categorically DO NOT have it, but on the other, I recall the fermenter sample of the wort tasting like fields of German sunshine.

Trying to think of where O2 might have entered the process, but as I said, I will wait for the finished beer..

Prosit!



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Nice, I'll get there some day

Excellent!

Hmm, 24+ hours and no pressure registering on the valves. (We calibrated and set to 10 psi prior to attaching)

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Any chance you have a leak? I always hit the keg with 5-6 psi to seat the lid and then spray for leaks. It's such a small volume of initial CO2 that I don't worry about it.

Yes, seat the lid first. Also without a FFT, you are not sure where you are at with extract and what not.

What's the collective wisdom on spunding for Weissbier? Does it result in too much sulfur dioxide being retained? I always get a ton of SO₂ with the Weihenstephaner strain, and I depend on force carbonation to scrub much of it out.

Looks like we may have transferred too late. We only have 4 PSI pressure in one of the kegs, so we'll need to force carbonate in a few weeks. Would a small dose of SMB be worthwhile since manmade CO2 has some O2 in it?

Do you have any sulfite test strips? Your yeast should have left you some sulfite in the beer. If you are under 10-25 ppm, then you might try a small dose of SMB.