Continuation from the "Yeast..." section

[ray m]

I brewed the base for my cherry ale today (continued from "expired white labs yeast" thread in the "yeast...' section). Overall, it went fairly well...I almost forgot how much time brewing all grain takes. Had a couple minor bumps in the road, though:

After adding water to my grist, the temp. was barely 150*. I have a hot water tap on my water cooler at home, so I added a few cups of that. That just lowered my temp. to around 144*. Damn it. Quickly boiled some water in a kettle and added it. Brought the temp up to 148*. Screw it...I'll see what happens. Thankfully, the starch converted OK in an hour, so onward I pressed.
Sparge went great---got my sparge time lasting 60 minutes. Boil went great also---even tried the spraying cold water on the foam trick when the wort started to boil. I could not believe how well that worked! Boil ended and hooked up chiller. Hose connected to my front spigot outside was frozen. Used the one from the back yard.
15 min. into the cooling, I remembered that I forgot to take my hop bag out of the wort. Damn it to hell! Went in quickly to get the long pair of tongs from the kitchen utensil rack. Came back out and stuck the tongs in the wort, now @ 90*. Oh, shit, forgot to sanitize the tongs!! Go the hop bag out anyway, then said a prayer.
Did the rest of the necessary odds 'n' ends, added 1/2 of my 2 qt. starter, etc. etc.
One hour after adding my starter, the airlock is already raised & bubbling once every 15 sec. or so.
I'm worried that I infected my wort with the tongs, and I am hoping that I did not add more bitterness to my brew (bitterness that I do not want) by letting the hops "steep". Can anyone alleviate my concerns (at least about the hops)?? Here was my base recipe:
---6.5 lbs. Maris Otter pale malt
---3/4 lb. 10L crystal
---3/4 lb. carapils
--- @ 6 AAU Mt. Hood hops---1.5 oz. @ 4.2% alpha acid (added at start of boil)
No flavoring or aroma hops added, intentionally anyway!!

OG was 1.049

Thanks, as always, gents......drink hearty!!!

Ray

[Fast_Eddy]

Originally posted by ray m
[B...
I'm worried that I infected my wort with the tongs, and I am hoping that I did not add more bitterness to my brew (bitterness that I do not want) by letting the hops "steep". Can anyone alleviate my concerns (at least about the hops)?? Here was my base recipe:
---6.5 lbs. Maris Otter pale malt
---3/4 lb. 10L crystal
---3/4 lb. carapils
--- @ 6 AAU Mt. Hood hops---1.5 oz. @ 4.2% alpha acid (added at start of boil)
No flavoring or aroma hops added, intentionally anyway!!

OG was 1.049

Thanks, as always, gents......drink hearty!!!

Ray [/B]

Very unlikely you added a noticeable amount of bitterness - AA is converted to iso-AA as a result of the boiling so bitterness is added during the boil. Feel better?

About the tongs - hehe - everybody's done the same thing. I've stuck an unsanitized thermometer in cooled wort more times than I'd care to count. I bet you'll be fine, especially since you pitched a good starter.

[wortchillergoal]

I stuck my bare arm into beer just before bottling, uo to elbow, no problems.

[ray m]

Thanks, Eddy & Wort'.....I definitely feel better about the hops. I didn't think it would make too much difference, but I wanted to make sure.

There are far worse things I have done to my past worts, too. I remember, on probably my 3rd batch ever, when I was still using dry yeast, that when I opened the package of yeast it spilled all over the floor. This happened after trying to cool it for almost 6 hours. So, since at that point I didn't care anymore, I used my hand to gather up as much yeast as I could into a pile (on the floor still), and picked it up and put it into the wort. *gasp*
The beer wasn't the greatest in the world, but it was drinkable.

[evilredlight]

I had an incident on the day i was racking from primary to secondary I used a wooden spoon to tilt the primary: this is a wooden spoon that we use to child proof the cupboard under the sink, where we keep a compost bin, so we are always touching it with gross stuff in our hands.
Any way somehow the spoon fell into the beer. I tasted the beer last night after only 1 week in secondary, One week for anything that is going to grow from the spoon to grow. but it tasted fine, delicious even. Not even like green beer really, it tased like mature beer. I figure I am going to try putting the wooden spoon in another beer.

[ray m]

Added the cherries today & took a hydrometer reading before doing so. The White Labs Australian Ale yeast went down to 1.006....not bad for yeast 2 months past the expiration date!! The base beer has a nice, clean taste. The Australian Ale strain has a little bit of a "breadiness" to it---that's the only way I can describe it. The Mt. Hood hops added a nice, clean bitterness. The cherries now give the beer a maroon hue. Had to go to work early tonight, but when I came back, the airlocks were chugging nicely and the beer had about 1/2" layer of new krausen on top (I divided it into two 5 gallon carboys).

Man, I can't wait to taste this brew---I hope it turns out. I wish I could figure out what my true final gravity would be---I forgot to get a gravity reading after adding the cherries.

Drink hearty!!! Ray

[brewmonkey]

With a low mash temp like that I am not suprised your yeast got down so low.

Since we are talking about "things" we have put into our beers, one day while racking 21bbl's out of primary and into secondary I was making some quick calculations with my handheld TI while standing on the ladder at the same time I realized my manway had become loose as the pressure on the tank dropped. I reached over to tighten it down some when the calculator slipped out of my hands, and right through the opening of the manway. D'oh!

[wortchillergoal]

Originally posted by brewmonkey
With a low mash temp like that I am not suprised your yeast got down so low.

Since we are talking about "things" we have put into our beers, one day while racking 21bbl's out of primary and into secondary I was making some quick calculations with my handheld TI while standing on the ladder at the same time I realized my manway had become loose as the pressure on the tank dropped. I reached over to tighten it down some when the calculator slipped out of my hands, and right through the opening of the manway. D'oh!

Did the taste of that beer add up?

[Fast_Eddy]

Originally posted by wortchillergoal
Did the taste of that beer add up?

You should've sold it as "Bean Counter's Ale - the taste you can count on" ;)