Refermentation not vigorous

Hello, I'm Rob - new member, and not much experience with brewing and forums. I'm not sure if my question belongs in this thread - please advise on that.

I'm brewing a Duval clone. It calls for what I think of as an actual refermentation - with 8 oz cane sugar (boiled in 2 cups water) and another vial of WLP 545 being added when racking to second carboy. I'm wondering if the refermentation is going well.

First Fermentation, I pitched at 70 deg. using a starter made from 1 vial of WLP 545, shook the carboy, and fermented at around 70 to 73 degrees.

My limited experience indicates that the first fermentation went well - within 12 hrs a vigorous stage with krausen blowing into the blowoff jar - 7 days later, just some bubbling, down to around 10 per minute.

Then, last Sunday, I poured the 8 oz cane sugar boiled in 2 cups water and cooled, and another vial of WLP 545 (no starter this time) directly into the empty second carboy, then carefully racked using only the stream of the beer at the bottom to somewhat mix the ingredients.

At that point the beer was around 72 deg, I then let it sit from last Sunday to yesterday (Wednesday) at around 70 deg., and then looked at it and noticed it did not have a vigorous stage and was bubbling around the same rate as before racking.

So I brought it into a warmer room and its been around 76 deg for about a day. it's still bubbling roughly at the same rate (maybe a bit more) as before the second fermentation. There is what I'd judge to be only a little "movement" visible in the beer in the carboy (compared to the extent of action during a vigorous period).

I realize there's a big difference in the amount of fermentable sugars between the two fermentations, but I don't know if that's the reason.

I'm wondering if something's gone wrong, and if so is there anything I should do.

Thank You.

You cannot rely on counting bubbles to deduce whether/how much fermentation is occurring. Your airlock or blowoff can bubble for any number of reasons, including changing temperature, the introduction of new nucleation points, slight vibration in the floor causing off-gassing, or dropping barometric pressure. Get away from the habit of equating airlock bubbles with fermentation activity. The only way to tell for sure what's happening with your beer is with hydrometer or refractometer measurements.

That said, 8 oz in 5 gallons of beer is a tiny amount of fermentables and would not produce a very active fermentation at all. Frankly, I'm surprised the recipe recommended this, as it sounds like the second yeast pitch is a way overpitch, considering the miniscule amount of fermentables you added.

Check your gravity with your hydrometer. If it remains unchanged after 3 days, bottle it.

Are you sure you didn't misread the instructions, that 8oz of sugar sounds like an addition to use for carbing the bottles when you bottle your beer. It would make a fairly high carbed beer and you really wouldn't need to add more yeast but I can see some people who think you need to add more yeast for it to carb.

Thanks guys - I'm following you, with the exception of nucleation points, which I'll look into later.

I think I'm good on following the directions on the sugars, and I do intend to use my hydrometer to ID the end of fermentation. But I didn't know how to interpret the directions on the second pitch amount because it wasn't specified, so I relied on the folks I bought my stuff from, and the advice was to use the same amount as the first pitch. Check out the attached PDF and you'll see where I may have gone wrong.

Assuming I over-pitched, is there anything I should do now to mitigate that?
Will my beer suffer somehow in taste due to the over pitching?

View attachment BelgianStrongCloneDuval.pdf

You did follow those instructions correctly, I am still baffled by "Priming" the secondary fermentation having only 8oz of sugar really effecting anything.

If you did over pitch, its not going to hurt anything at this point. The yeast won't have anything to eat so they will just go dormant or die and fall out of the beer, not to mention the high ABV is a very hostile environment,. They aren't going to do anything, so there is very little chance you will get off flavors.

The only thing to mitigate the potential problem would be to filter the beer or give a hard cold crash. But i wouldn't do anything at this point. Just let it sit in the fermentor until its ready to be bottled.

No no, I wouldn't worry at all about an overpitch, especially with such a small amount of fermentables. That won't harm your beer in the least at this point in the process. And it appears you did indeed follow the instructions, and there's a separate step listed for the priming sugar. One nitpick I'd point out is that they're advising you to measure your priming sugar by volume, when the recommended method is actually by weight (it's more accurate). So far, so good.

Agreed that the recipe/directions are a little odd, but the point, I think, was that they were trying to encourage the yeast to keep going to squeeze as much attenuation as possible out of the fermentation. That is a key to brewing a good Belgian Tripel or Golden Strong - the beer needs to be dry and easy to drink, while still being a high gravity beer.

Don't worry about the 'strength' of the secondary fermentation - if its fermenting, let it go. Don't rush it, when fermentation appears to be done, let it sit another week at least. Then take a hydrometer reading and see where you're at. The last Belgian Golden Strong I made ended up at 1.004 and it was wonderfully/devilshly drinkable!

Agreed that you have done as the directions state. Also already said: you can't judge the second fermentation by the first. There was a lot more "food" for the yeast in the first pitch. The second is mostly to assure a full attenuation and dry beer. And since there are very few sugars left for the new pitch the action will be a lot more subtle.

It's great to receive so much response, and all optimistic... I'm getting a warm and fuzzy feeling - much like what I expect when the brew is finally consumed.

With respect to the Duval clone instructions in the PDF with my second post, one other thing is completely new to me - the cold conditioning. When I was reading threads about what to put on the top of the carboy while it's in the fridge at 35 deg for a month, I found many who caution that the pressure in the headspace can or will drop, and that an S-type airlock is somewhat less likely to give up it's liquid, sometimes suggested as being vodka. So I'm thinking I need to watch this like a hawk, and add more liquid as needed. Am I on the right track on that? What if it's empty for a half day or whatever before I catch it?

PS:
While I'm typing this, I'm smelling the delightful aroma of a DFH60 clone that's fermenting next to me. I jacked up the hops.

kombat said:

One nitpick I'd point out is that they're advising you to measure your priming sugar by volume, when the recommended method is actually by weight (it's more accurate). So far, so good.

Click to expand...

kombat, do you think it's too much, too little, a typo?

I'm using the old Yuengling Premium 16oz returnables - a pretty heavy bottle.

It's probably about right, but still, I'd use one of the online priming sugar calculator's like the one on Northern Brewer's website and measure by weight to be more precise.

I will do that and compare it to the directions.

I have another question. Last night I did the first FG hydrometer reading and tasted the beer. My hydro reads 60ish degree water at .998 instead of 1. The reading on my beer was 1, so I figure it's 1.002. I'll do some more readings, but considering what Pappers mentioned about a FG of 1.004 on one of his Belgian Golden Strongs, I figure I'm very close to FG.

Keep in mind I'm a beginner at brewing, and I'm not the best at identifying and articulating characteristics. I'd say the beer has too much evidence of one of the alcohol/solvent related results that in higher levels is undesired - it is definitely a hot/warming effect. I think I learned that, depending on exactly what's happening, that sensation may diminish if the beer sits longer on the yeast.

My recipe calls for 4 weeks at 35 degrees after fermentation is complete. If I am very close to FG, I would go to the fridge very soon.

But considering my situation with the hot/warming effect, should I wait some before the cold conditioning, of will the potential "cleaning up" of the undesirable effect happen during the cold conditioning?

Golden Strongs are big beers, so hot alcohol flavors are certainly a danger. I suspect that starting your fermentation at 70F may have led to production of fusel alcohols, and might have been mitigated with a lower starting fermentation temperature. One method to brewing big dry Belgians is to start the fermentation at a low temp and then raise it over time - the early low temps keeps the off-flavors from developing but the steadily increasing temps help the yeast to stay active.

If the issue truly is fusel alcohols, I don't believe conditioning helps that, but I certainly know beers that have smoothed out with aging. So, I would consider letting it condition for a while and see what happens. Nothing to lose. The four weeks at 35 degrees your recipe calls for is called lagering and will help the beer clear.