Author: Marshall Schott

BIAB is quickly becoming my go-to method for 5 gallon batches– start to finish in 3 hours, easy clean-up, and less equipment all make it very appealing to me. A few weeks back, while finishing up a BIAB brew day, I wondered, “Couldn’t I just pitch the yeast into the chilled wort in the kettle?” Given the results of the trub exBEERiment, I wasn’t at all concerned about all the hot break and hop sludge in the kettle. No shit, a day or 2 later I received an email from Wilser, maker of the the awesome WilserBrewer BIAB bags, asking if I’d considered fermenting a beer in the kettle. Synchro-fucking-nicity. Wilser mentioned he had done this a few times and had yet to experience any problems, he shared some of his techniques with me and I started planning for the brew day!

My good friend’s Padalinski Porter recipe is one I’d been wanting to try making for awhile, so I plugged it into BeerSmith and bastardized it a bit.

Padalinski Porter (5.5 gal)

8 lbs Maris Otter

1 lbs Brown Malt

12 oz Munich 10L

12 oz Pale Chocolate

6 oz C120

6 oz Special B

6 oz Acidulate Malt

Magnum @ 60 to 25 IBU

26 g Hallertauer Hersbrucker @ 10 min

WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast

Mash at 157˚F for 60 minutes

Boil for 60 minutes

Pitch at 64˚F and ferment at 66˚, ramp to 72˚F after 3-4 days

I hadn’t had Porter on tap in months, I was pretty excited to get this thing going. Per my normal procedure, I collected all of my water and milled my grains the evening before brewing.

I mashed in the WilserBrewer bag, which again kept all husk material separate from the wort.

In the past, I used the kettle thermometer to determine when I needed to turn the heat on due to drops in mash temp; because of the more rapid loss, I always mash in 1-2° warmer when using the BIAB method. For this batch, I had the genius idea to check temps in the middle of the mash using a probe thermometer– 20 minutes in, I’d lost 0.4°F when I was expecting closer to 2°F, meaning the mash was about 2°F warmer than the recipe called for. I prepped myself for a slightly less fermentable wort.

After an hour, the bag was removed, the pulley setup making this part of the process a cinch.

I nailed the pre-boil gravity and brought the sweet wort to a nice rolling boil in about 10 minutes, at which point the first charge of hops were added. What I imagine was the Brown Malt really came through during the boil, it smelled pretty damn nice.

Chilling commenced once the boil was complete, my King Cobra got me to about 78°F (4°F above groundwater) in just under 5 minutes– I went nuts sloshing the wort around vigorously to aerate.

This is where things took a turn toward the novel, for me at least. After sanitizing the ball valve and underside of my kettle’s lid, I moved the entire 6-ish gallons of wort, kettle trub and all, directly to the fermentation chamber in the kettle.

My 14 gallon kettle almost didn’t fit, I failed to check this beforehand. Ehh. Given the larger diameter, I was unable to heed Wilser’s advice to secure a plastic garbage bag around the lid of the kettle. I used a goddamn bungee cord. It was tight.

It took about 4 hours for the wort to reach my target pitching temp of 64°F, at which point I poured the starter of WLP090 directly into the kettle… and then the questioning began.

What if a tiny stupid little bug is able to squeeze between the lid and lip of the kettle?

Will all the headspace have an impact on the finished beer?

Do I have what it takes to lift a beer filled kettle out of the freezer without having a hernia?

Fuck it, what’s done is done. I wasn’t going to let my neuroses get the best of me and accepted this beer was going to be shit. I proceeded to check on it multiple times over the following 3 days, you know, just to make sure “everything looked okay.”

I use WLP090 often and know that it is a quick fermenter, but I was sort of surprised to discover the krausen on this beer had dropped almost completely in just 3 days.

My curiosity got the better of me and I pulled a hydrometer sample.

1.025, obviously the yeast was still doing its thing. Even at just 3 days and with a high SG, the beer was pretty tasty with noticeable roast, chocolate, and hints of toasted nuts and maple (?). I figured I’d give it another couple days before testing again. Damn… the yeast wasn’t doing its thing, the beer had only dropped to 1.024. In complete annoyance and following a brief consultation with Chris, I sprinkled in a sachet of Danstar BRY-97, a yeast I understand takes a few days to take off then finishes in about a day.

Well that didn’t do shit, 4 days later and the beer was still at 1.024, argh.

Hey, it tasted alright, it was only 5 gallons, I know some people who would probably enjoy it… no, I was fucking annoyed and my stupid mash temp idea was the likely culprit. I was done trying to dry this beer out, so I started cold crashing. It looked like beer before kegging.

Moving the kettle/fermentor out of the freezer was definitely a pain in the ass and I ended up stirring up a fair amount of yeast. I let it sit for about 15 minutes before attaching a sanitized tube to the sanitized ball valve and transferring to the sanitized keg (this part was really convenient). I tossed it in the keezer and hit it with 30 psi for 36 hours then lowered it to 12 psi for another 4 days before a faucet opened up. It was carbonated and, as far as I could tell, rather clear.

While the flavor and aroma are actually pretty decent, the sweetness definitely takes away from the quaffability of this beer. I’ve had Chris’ Porter and it is far easier to swill than my version. Still, it’s not a dumper, I try to have a 1/2 pint or so per day and am definitely willing to share (if you’re in Fresno, even if I don’t know you, hit me up… please).

It seems pretty obvious to me the problems with this beer have nothing to do with the fact I fermented it in a brew kettle, but rather seem to stem more from process issues. In fact, I was pleased with the fact I didn’t pick up any flavors or aromas indicative of some sort of infection, which I reckon is partially a function of the fact it fermented in a sealed freezer. Would I ever ferment in a kettle again? Hmm. Truthfully, not on my normal setup, but only because the cumbersomeness of my kettle outweighs the convenience of kettle fermenting. Now, for my smaller 1-2 gallon batch sizes where I use a 4 gallon kettle, I definitely plan to try this again!

A huge thanks to Wilser for all the tips and Chris for the recipe (sorry I fucked it up). If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to ask or leave ’em. Cheers!

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