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The thinner new pot and super-hot turkey burner flame resulted in a little bit of scalding on the bottom of the boil kettle from beer-making yesterday. However, it’s just a little bit, and I don’t see it causing any issues. The larger kettle with a bigger opening made boiling a lot easier. Foam-ups during hop addition cleared themselves automatically, there was practically no risk of boil-over, and I could keep the heat nicely high (and thus a harder boil) during the whole process.
After boiling and cooling the wort I also did something to save a bit of money on yeast: racking the wort right on to the trub from the previous batch of beer. Since I was making a darker and hoppier (but otherwise similar style) beer this won’t affect the flavor of it, and the extremely large quantity of yeast meant that the batch was fermenting strongly within four hours. Normally the amount of activity seen just a few hours later would take 24-36 hours to occur when pitching (pouring into the wort) the quantity of yeast in a Wyeast Activator pack. Not only did this decrease lag time while the yeast started growing, it also saves roughly $8 on yeast, the time spent cleaning out the fermenter, and is simply less wasteful overall.
As this beer (a dark IPA) is recommended to have two months of aging I’ll probably do another short-aging-time beer after this with the goal of having three full kegs of beer in the kegged beer cooler. If I can constantly keep three different (tasty) beers in there with one aging, I’ll be pretty set for variety, having friends over, and saving money overall.
My tin of irish stout is fermenting away nicely, and on Monday or Tuesday I’ll syphon it off into a pressure barrel and leave it for a month. I’ve got a brick outhouse that remains cool so it can live in there.
Once opened, how long can can a 5 gallon barrel of beer be kept for until it becomes undrinkable? I presume it’ll just taste bad before anything harmful starts to grow in it?
James: If refrigerated, I’d guess months to a year. Unrefrigerated, probably less?
Also, yes, nothing that’ll hurt you will grow in it unless you’ve contaminated it (which is rare), it’ll just taste bad first. It sounds to me like you’re on the right path with it. Just wait until it’s not really bubbling anymore to transfer it, then you should be good to go. You’ll want to keep it cool for drinking, so hopefully you’ve got space in the fridge.
Just keep everything clean and it’ll be nice.