As my last entry outlined, we (BYO and BBR) are looking for homebrewers willing to participate in our pitching rate experiment. The deadline for getting your results to us is September 30th, so you'll need to brew your beers in the next few weeks if you want to participate.

I outlined the basics of the experiment in my last post, but James and I are adding a twist to the experiment by each using the same yeast (US-05), but brewing different beers. I'm brewing a pale ale and he's brewing a barley wine. If possible, we'd like to get at least one other pair of brewers to try the same thing with an English yeast (S-04, Nottingham, Windsor, etc.). If you're interested in brewing one of those, drop either James or me a line at  james@basicbrewing.com or chris@byo.com.

I brewed my experimental beer yesterday. I made 11 gallons of pale ale. My grain bill was 16 lbs. of 2-row pale malt, 5 lbs. Vienna malt and 1.75 lbs. crystal malt (60 °L). I bittered the beer with Summit hops and used Cascade for the late additions. The brew day went well. Here's a picture of the teig (the protein "goo") sitting on top of my mash after recirculation and some sparging.

I got really nice-looking hot break. You can almost see it in the following picture.

One thing didn't quite go as planned, so I might have to start over next weekend. Yesterday, when I brewed the beer, was my wife's birthday. And, she wanted to go out after work and meet some friends for a beer. My plan in the morning was to brew the beer, chill the wort, then let the cold break settle while we went out. Later that evening, when I got back, I'd rack the wort to the carboys and pitch the yeast.

You can probably figure out what happened. We stayed out late and the wort didn't get racked to the fermenters until this morning. That left a sizable amount of time during which the wort was just sitting there, potentially being vulnerable to contamination.

This morning, the wort smelled good and I could not taste any evidence of contamination. The kettle did have its lid on the whole time and the vessel and lid should have been sanitized during the boil. I've kept about 1.5 liters of unpitched wort in a media bottle and will watch it for the next few days. If it starts to ferment on it's own today or tomorrow, I'll probably just pour all this beer out. If the bottle goes four or more days without showing evidence of fermentation, then I suspect I'll be safe. If it starts showing evidence of fermentation on the third day, I'll have to make a decision. 

Here's a shot of the five 3-gallon carboys, each with 2 gallons of wort. In the photo, the three carboys with the lowest pitching rates still have some foam on top from the aeration. I'll be keeping an eye on them to see when fermentation starts for each of them, and when it ends.

So, the long wait until racking wasn't the greatest move when it comes to brewing. But, my wife puts up with a lot of brewing-related things from me, so I thought I'd show some sense and let her have as much fun as she wanted on her birthday. If worse comes to worse, I'll just repeat the experiment next week some day when I can clear the whole day.