About 5 weeks ago we brewed a Blonde Ale / here I wanted to experiment more with the wild yeast culture that I have collected from raspberries in summer of 2018. This is my second attempt, the first was brewing a low ABV beer, but even here I think letting it ferment for more than the original 1 week would have been better. I finished fermenting in the bottles, so I am glad I didn’t use too much priming sugar.
below pic of the Krausen, some of it was saved…
It seems very important to monitor the activity and make sure it is done, especially if you are going to use priming sugar in your bottles so that they don’t over pressurize and become little time bombs.
The culture works, but incrementally over time, for this test I didn’t do any temperature tests, just keeping the Beeruino set at minimum 68F, since the basement can get cold sometimes – but right now I don’t know if it performs better at higher temps like 75F or 80 ~ 90F or some other range.
I took a weekly sample using a hydrometer and its flask.
The OG (original gravity) was 1.059 on this Blonde Ale.
| 1 week later | 1.04 |
| 2 weeks later | 1.03 |
| 3 weeks later | 1.022 |
| 4 weeks later | 1.014 |
| 5 weeks later | 1.010 |
| 6 weeks later | 1.008 |
Looks like at about 1.010 the fermentation stabilized and ABV is about 6.7% / probably in the end closer to 7%
I would monitor the flask as it basically is a mini-fermentor, but would still take a weekly sample from the fermentor, it was pretty much spot on – so one should be able to just take one sample with a hydrometer and monitor the flask (save beer), cover it with tinfoil or something like that seems to work awesome for me.
