Stirring beer during primary fermentation

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Hello,

I started all-grain brewing a few weeks ago and am now fermenting my 3rd brew.
It is in the primary, and I normally leave it for 3 weeks there before priming and bottling.
The last 2 brews (and many of my extract-based brews in the past) suffered from appley acetaldehyde aroma and flavour, and I realised I wasn't aerating the wort very much at all before pitching yeast.
The current batch, however, I aerated a lot, and fermentation started very quickly and was more lively than I usuall experience (same yeast and beer styles). I'm hoping this aeration might help the yeast last longer to finish cleaning up the acetaldehyde before going dormant, we'll see.

Anyway, another thing I thought is to gently stir the beer in the primary after maybe 1 week, to resuspend yeast and maybe kick a bit of fermentation going again. Is this a bad idea? Will it probably do nothing other than expose the beer to some oxygen even if I'm careful?

Would be happy to hear any advice or thoughts!
 
I would not stir it for the reason you mentioned. If you use dry yeast, aeration is not an issue. Once I pitch the yeast, I leave it alone. That's just me!
 
Over The Cliff Brewing said:
I would not stir it for the reason you mentioned. If you use dry yeast, aeration is not an issue. Once I pitch the yeast, I leave it alone. That's just me!
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And me! Don't even open it. You will introduce oxidation which you don't want after fermentation starts.

You also raise the possibility of infections by alot
 
Agree with the above. Don't stir, because there is no possible benefit. You aren't going to make spent yeast all of a sudden come back to life by stirring, shaking, swirling etc.

The key to fermentation is pitching enough healthy yeast at the proper temperature and keeping the wort in the yeast's temperature happy zone throughout active fermentation. You could try raising the temp a few degrees when fermentation settles down to accelerate cleanup, but if you are leaving the beer for 3 weeks, you should be giving the yeast plenty of time to do their thing.

Good luck!
 
Don't aerate after fermentation has started. Period.

That flavor is usually taken up by the east, as you correctly stated, after active fermentation has ended. Shaking it a little probably won't help.

The issue, in my opinion, might be fermentation temperature. When fermentation is getting close to stopping, raise the temperature a little bit. For ales that usually means about 5°F or perhaps 3°C. For lagers it's about 10°F. This will give the east energy to finish the job.

To determine when the fermentation is stopping, look at the bubbles through the airlock. When you're getting about 1/4 of the bubbles as compared to active fermentation, it's coming to an end. I usually raise the temperature about a day before I think fermentation will finish.
 
Half a year later, I've since done 4 (5?) brews since I posted this thread.

I can say that the appley/acetaldehyde flavour in all my brews was coming from Safale S-04. This is the only yeast I ever used during all my extract brewing, and also for my first 3 all grain brews, and the flavour was present in all my beers. My darker malt-forward beer styles seemed to be affected worst, but even the lighter hop-dominant beers I brewed were very appley.

I have heard many say home-brewed beer always tastes 'home-brewed' and that there's a characteristic flavour that is always present. Now I wonder if that is S-04? It seems to be a very popular and readily available yeast and one that I think many people start out with.

I have since changed yeast, my go-to is Safale US-05 dry ale yeast, and the improvement is amazing.
The yeast steps back and lets the malt and hops really come to the fore which in my experience really was not the case for S-04. There is no appley flavour/aroma and the strong fruitiness and acetaldehyde is gone.
I suppose S-04 has it's place, though I brew a lot of english ales which is supposedly what this yeast is developed for. Maybe I'm just super sensitive to it's fruity flavour profile.
Each to their own, but hopefully this is insightful for some brewers :)
 
acetaldehyde is caused by unhealthy yeast or too low fermentation temp.

S-04 is a great yeast, but takes longer to finish than us05 (in my experience)
 
I dislike S05, so won’t use it any longer. It throws peachy esters than I just cannot stand, and it takes too long to drop clear so I stopped using it a while ago.

S04 is great- in cider. It’s also ok in English ales, at 62F and no higher or else it gets weird flavors that I can detect a mile away.

I really don’t have any dry yeast that I like, so I buy liquid yeast and save it and reuse it. Dry yeast used to be cheap- like $1.59/pack but it’s nearly the same price now as Wyeast and Omega and Imperial, so I don’t see a reason to ever use it in my brewing. I buy maybe two strains of yeast a year, and save/reuse it so I don’t often buy yeast. White Labs is a bit more expensive, but the store I order from doesn’t carry it so I tend to go with Wyeast.
 
Yooper said:
I dislike S05, so won’t use it any longer. It throws peachy esters than I just cannot stand, and it takes too long to drop clear so I stopped using it a while ago.

S04 is great- in cider. It’s also ok in English ales, at 62F and no higher or else it gets weird flavors that I can detect a mile away.

I really don’t have any dry yeast that I like, so I buy liquid yeast and save it and reuse it. Dry yeast used to be cheap- like $1.59/pack but it’s nearly the same price now as Wyeast and Omega and Imperial, so I don’t see a reason to ever use it in my brewing. I buy maybe two strains of yeast a year, and save/reuse it so I don’t often buy yeast. White Labs is a bit more expensive, but the store I order from doesn’t carry it so I tend to go with Wyeast.
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Very surprised at this post.

Not sure where you’re buying your supplies, but dry is not “nearly the same price as Wyeast etc” where I get it from. At Keystone Homebrew, dry is less than half of liquid.

And of the dry yeasts that I use, BRY-97, W34/70, Farmhouse, London, Windsor, and Diamond are all wonderful. At least to me. I never got “peach” from US-05, though I’ve heard others mention this as well. Doesn’t matter, BRY-97 is better than US-05 in every possible way.
 
Interesting
And thanks for the feedback brewer(whatever number) :)
 
Megary said:
Very surprised at this post.

Not sure where you’re buying your supplies, but dry is not “nearly the same price as Wyeast etc” where I get it from. At Keystone Homebrew, dry is less than half of liquid.

And of the dry yeasts that I use, BRY-97, W34/70, Farmhouse, London, Windsor, and Diamond are all wonderful. At least to me. I never got “peach” from US-05, though I’ve heard others mention this as well. Doesn’t matter, BRY-97 is better than US-05 in every possible way.
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Never get peach from it either. If I want a super clean ale with nearly no yeast character. US05 is my goto.
 
Wirh S 04, I bet it is fermentation temps. You probably want to be in the 66 or 67 degree range. You get hot with that yeast, it might not like it. If going dark and Englishy I used WLP 004 on my Porter fermenting at around 67 and it turned out quite good after sitting on it for a couple of weeks.
 
Megary said:
Very surprised at this post.

Not sure where you’re buying your supplies, but dry is not “nearly the same price as Wyeast etc” where I get it from. At Keystone Homebrew, dry is less than half of liquid.

And of the dry yeasts that I use, BRY-97, W34/70, Farmhouse, London, Windsor, and Diamond are all wonderful. At least to me. I never got “peach” from US-05, though I’ve heard others mention this as well. Doesn’t matter, BRY-97 is better than US-05 in every possible way.
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Same. At my lhbs in the state of Oregon (where Wyeast is produced), a smack pack now costs $13.99, while a packet of US-05 costs $5.49; BRY-97 costs $5.99 per packet. About 6 months ago, that Wyeast smack pack cost $10. I get great results with Wyeast, but the new price is hard to justify for a 2.5 gallon batch.
 
just buy a brick of any dry yeast, use a tablespoon at a time, I have 3 or 4 different brands, should last for many years
 
I only use dry.
I would never be able to get liquid here with a guaranteed cool chain.
But I'm happy with (most of) the dry yeasts I have tried.
 
Well I've used many many different yeast dry, liquid,slurry (washed and unwashed) and have pretty much settled on using mostly dry. Especially now since there are so many options available that weren't just a few years ago. As far as far as home brew always having a home brew taste. Thats just bs perpetuated by people who can't make good beer or maybe some commercial guys. It will always boil down to process. The Chico strain is a fantastic dry and I've used many different brands of it. That said US-05 and US-04 have different characteristics so in a side by side you should see a slight difference. Anyway that's my 2¢ not that it matters. Just joining the conversation
 
Do you think any of these opinion on yeast supplier are affiliation driven? One say really good another says really bad? Very confusing
 
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