Steve973

Recipes 

About 4 weeks ago, a friend and I attempted to brew a Duvel clone. Some of you may remember when I posted about it. We circulated while mashing, and our schedule was like this:

1.25 qt/lb
60 minutes @ 140
30 minutes @ 150
Mashout @ 170

The starting gravity was a little high at 1.090.

We used pils malt and dextrose made up 17% of fermentables. Now, at the 4 week mark, our gravity is at 1.030 and we were hoping for a FG of around 1.010 since we mashed for attenuation. We had 2 starters: 1 was cultured from Duvel bottles, and the other was White Labs Duvel yeast. My buddy even dropped an extra vial of the WL Duvel yeast into the fermenter between the 2 and 3 week mark to be sure the yeast was still viable, but that didn't seem to help.

Any input?

Thanks,
Steve

Kaiser

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This doesn't really help because you are putting exhausted yeast into a wort void of vital nutrients (the initial pitch of yeast consumed all the O2 and amino acids). If you do that, you need to make starter to grow some fresh yeast and pitch the yeast sediment from that. This yeast should be more healty than the yeast from a vial or smack-pack

Now to your initial problem. Could the pH of the mash have been far off?

b/c you are looking for a highly fermented beer, you may want to try some Beano in the fermenter to fix the problem. Beano is an amylase enzyme preparation that you can find in the drug store.

Kai

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jvetter

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I am the friend that Steve973 brewed with.

We did not check the PH of the water, but we did add Buffer 5.2 to the strike and sparge water.

As of 2/17/06 the gravity is only at 1.030 and bubbles are occuring every 20-30 seconds. We were hoping for a gravity of around 1.010 but its been over 4 weeks now.

Do you really think adding amylase enzyme at this point will help any.

Thanks,
Jaime

faber

Recipes 

Not that this will help you now, but...

Did you aerate it *really* well? When I brew big, I bring over a couple of friends and we aerate it in shifts (shaking it in the primary violently), for about 18 minutes total. I can get away with pitching right out of the vial--no starter, strong fermentations.

Good luck with saving your batch. It sounds like it'll be a good one.

jvetter

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We arated with oxygen during the transfer to the fermentor, but we probbaly didn't do nearly enough (5-10 mins).

Also, consider that is dropped 40 points in the first five days (1.090 - 1.050) but since then (almost 4 weeks) it has only dopped 20 more points to 1.030.

Any suggestion as to what I can do now to get it at least below 1.020? I'm currently seeing bubbles once every 20-30 seconds, but at the rate its going I may have to wait another month!

Thanks

grnich

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One bubble per 20-30 seconds probably means it's not fermenting, but degassing naturally as any carbonated liquid would do. Sounds like it's done to me.

I would take Kaiser's advice and add a few Beano. I did this on a batch that wouldn't ferment anymore and it worked great. Went from 1.03 to 1.012 in a couple of weeks.

jvetter

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Any suggestion in how much beano I should use for a 10 gallon batch?

Thanks

bandt9299

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I had a Guinness clone that stopped @ 1.025, I added 2 beano to 5 gallons and kegged it 2 weeks later @ 1.010. So 4 should be safe. Although your SG was much higher than my Guinness.

Gabe

Recipes 

Are you guy's talkin about the Beano for gas fixn?

ALPS

Recipes 

With pure O2, 2-3 minutes is all you need.

At what temp are you fermenting this? Belgian yeasts can go quite warm.

Some have reported that gently stirring the yeast back into suspention helps.

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