I checked the gravity's tonight and I can't complain about the attenuation, and while both beers taste very different, they both seem like they'll have great promise. I have a hard time judging outcomes from beer that's hardly finished in the fermenter, but there was no off aromas or flavors for sure.
My stainless steel conical got the first batch which started at 1.046 or 11.4 brix and finished at 5.6 which amounts to 5% alcohol and a finished gravity calculated to 1.008. That's the stuff I added the 5-year-old s23 to. Both of these have been set to 70° since yesterday but the actual temperature, while I didn't check it today, is much lower still I'm sure. I'm just not making an active effort to cool it anymore. I'll start the cold crash soon as well. It's probably in the mid 60s and I really don't even care.
Batch 2 in the two big mouth bubblers in the lower half of the same freezer started at 1.050 or 12.4 brix. It finished at 6.0 brix which calculates to 1.007 as a finished gravity for a 5.55% abv. Since I brew so few lagers, I hesitate to try to claim anything about the flavors. I would say if anything I hope the hops will creep a little bit because they're both quite mild. I would say the beer in the conical even has a sweet foreground to it right now but what beer that hasn't left the fermenter doesn't have some of that. I only removed about a teaspoon to check with the refractometer and tasted what I didn't use so, not a great big sample.
I fully expected some attenuation problems given all the lag this had. I'm downright shocked at where they ended up. Also shocked that the 2018 s23 ended up where the 2024 3470 did. Although it's very possible the initial pitch of yeast is what really did all the heavy lifting and the extra yeast I threw in was just a complete waste. I'll never know. That really sucks because they're $8 a pack and I added four of them.
I'll try to continue to add updates because I hate when I look back at a really old thread that looks interesting and it's just chops off and you never find out what the beer was like. I don't expect this to be some stuff I'm going to enter in a contest or anything, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to be my worst beer ever. I'm going to be drinking this stuff. It tastes plenty yeasty still but it also has about half the yeast in suspension yet. Seeing through that though, there's a pretty clean beer underneath if I can get it to clean up.