Unintentional Diacetyl rest

Well apparently I may have done a good thing by letting the Altbier warm up before putting it in the secondary. Ray at Keystone said that it is a good idea to let a beer sit for a couple days at room temperature between primary and secondary fermentations/cold conditioning. The function of the "diacetyl rest" is to minimize the presence of sulfur odors/flavors in your beer. I read also that the butterscotch flavor is caused by diacetyls.

Well, the beer in the fridge is at about 41 degrees, and I plan to leave it for a couple weeks before bottling. If I smell anything amiss, I will warm it up for a couple days and then back in the fridge it will go for another week or two. The nice thing is that even if I do smell the diacetyl, that doesn't mean that the beer is ruined -- it just may take a little longer before it is ready.

Another piece of advice from Ray had to do with the low original gravity. He said that maybe I am not getting good utilization on my specialty grains. One way to improve that would be to skip the muslin bags and to use a strainer instead. Start with cold water, put the grains in a strainer in the water. Gradually raise the temperature from cold to 168 degrees over the course of 45 minutes, stirring the grains in the strainer on occasion. That way the grains are loose and one can extract more from the grains themselves. In the muslin bag, the water may never reach the center of the grain ball.

Will have to try all this out with the nut brown ale I will make Wednesday.

In other news, I now have a 21 quart brew pot and I'm going to do full boils (or close to it) from now on!