Bottle carbing a stalled beer?

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cotillion

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I've been fermenting a pumpkin ale for a few weeks now, and it appears to have stalled out. OG was 1.080 and it's been stuck at about 1.026 for quite a while. I've tried stirring up, nutrient and even repitched with more US05.

Temp has been maintained at around 65 for most of the time, so I am not sure as to what caused it. It tastes good, so I'm fine moving along as it is.

My problem is that I bottle carb and am unsure of how to proceed. Since there appears to still be sugars in there, I am afraid dropping in some champagne yeast will give me bottle bombs. I don't have a kegging system, so force carbing is out.

At this point, the only idea I have is to gelatin fine the beer in a few days at cold temp, then pitch yeast (with or without priming sugar?) and letting it sit for a few days before bottling - to let it eat up any excess sugars before going to bottle.

Does this make sense? Any other thoughts or tips?
 
cotillion said:
I've been fermenting a pumpkin ale for a few weeks now, and it appears to have stalled out. OG was 1.080 and it's been stuck at about 1.026 for quite a while. I've tried stirring up, nutrient and even repitched with more US05.

Temp has been maintained at around 65 for most of the time, so I am not sure as to what caused it. It tastes good, so I'm fine moving along as it is.

My problem is that I bottle carb and am unsure of how to proceed. Since there appears to still be sugars in there, I am afraid dropping in some champagne yeast will give me bottle bombs. I don't have a kegging system, so force carbing is out.

At this point, the only idea I have is to gelatin fine the beer in a few days at cold temp, then pitch yeast (with or without priming sugar?) and letting it sit for a few days before bottling - to let it eat up any excess sugars before going to bottle.

Does this make sense? Any other thoughts or tips?

Was this AG and what temp did you mash.

If you already stirred, increased temp and re-pitched and it still hasn't moved then its done:)
 
It was AG, mash was around 158, give or take a degree.

I haven't tried raising temp, mostly because I thought US05 didn't like anything over 75.

By done, do you mean it's safe to add priming sugar and champagne yeast to bottle?

Edit: Just put it in a warm water bath and gave the carboy a few back and forth twists. Lots of cake now floating up to the top, pretty aggressively. Not sure if that's just agitation releasing trapped CO2 or if it got things moving that quickly.
 
1.080 to 1.026 puts you at about 7% ABV. I don't think champagne yeast are required. I would let the temp rise to about 70F, and see if that drops it a few points. Let it stabilize again, then you can add priming sugar and the US05 that's in there should carb it fine.
 
1.080 to 1.026 puts you at about 7% ABV. I don't think champagne yeast are required. I would let the temp rise to about 70F, and see if that drops it a few points. Let it stabilize again, then you can add priming sugar and the US05 that's in there should carb it fine.

Even if the 05 has apparently given up?
 
cotillion said:
It was AG, mash was around 158, give or take a degree.

I haven't tried raising temp, mostly because I thought US05 didn't like anything over 75.

By done, do you mean it's safe to add priming sugar and champagne yeast to bottle?

Edit: Just put it in a warm water bath and gave the carboy a few back and forth twists. Lots of cake now floating up to the top, pretty aggressively. Not sure if that's just agitation releasing trapped CO2 or if it got things moving that quickly.

If you mashed 158 then you mashed high, got a less fermentable wort and after all you've done nothing has changed so the beer is done and ready to package. There is no need to add any yeast at bottling, there is plenty to do the job:)
 
If you mashed 158 then you mashed high, got a less fermentable wort and after all you've done nothing has changed so the beer is done and ready to package. There is no need to add any yeast at bottling, there is plenty to do the job:)

Hrm..the recipe called for mashing at 160, which I thought would be too high. I'm curious as to how the recipe was able to achieve those numbers and where I went wrong. Maybe I temp shocked my yeast with the initial pitch. I wasn't very careful. Oh well, I'll let it sit at a warmer temp til Sunday and then get some gelatin in there before bottling. Will probably try to suck up a little trub from the bottom when racking to bottle bucket.
 
cotillion said:
Hrm..the recipe called for mashing at 160, which I thought would be too high. I'm curious as to how the recipe was able to achieve those numbers and where I went wrong. Maybe I temp shocked my yeast with the initial pitch. I wasn't very careful. Oh well, I'll let it sit at a warmer temp til Sunday and then get some gelatin in there before bottling. Will probably try to suck up a little trub from the bottom when racking to bottle bucket.

I'd be curious to see the recipe with a suggested mash temp that high, definitely leaves for a very full body beer. With an OG of 1.080, 1.020 would be a reasonable FG to achieve with a standard 152 mash. Are you sure your thermometer is properly calibrated?
 
I'd be curious to see the recipe with a suggested mash temp that high, definitely leaves for a very full body beer. With an OG of 1.080, 1.020 would be a reasonable FG to achieve with a standard 152 mash. Are you sure your thermometer is properly calibrated?

Its the 40something-page southern tier pumking clone thread. Page 20 has the base recipe most have tweaked from. My thermometer is calibrated for sure. Where I may have slipped would be when I turned flame off at approaching mash temp. I never quite get it right, and I often overshoot since it climbs a bit. Usually I just wait until it comes back down before adding grain. Maybe I also underestimated my grain temperature in calculating strike? So many ways to mess up.
 
To answer the direct questio. Yes, you can bottle it even if it stalled. You don't need to add more yeast.

A mash temp of 158 will leave a beer pretty malty. In my experience, with a 60min mash, every degree above 153 yields 2% less attenuation, So at 158 you are 10% less fermentable. US-05 attenuates to about 75% so you could expect 65% attenuation which puts you at a final gravity of 1.028.

My guess is that was a typo on the recipe. It was probably supposed to be 150.

Here's a post on temperatures:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/10/mash-temperature-and-thermometers.html

There are several things you can try to restart it, and several options to save it.
preview of post:

Top 10 ways to fix a stalled fermentation.
1) Give the fermenter a swirl.
Try the easy things first. You might be able to squeeze a few more points out of the fermentation by gently coaxing the yeast back into suspension.

2) Move the fermenter to a warmer area.
Fermentation temperature can change attenuation by about 2%. That might be enough to get over the line from cloyings to malty.

3) Repitch with a higher attenuating yeast
Champagne yeasts will ferment simple sugars to completely dry. Try adding a packet of EC-1118. At this point in the fermentation the flavors have already been added by the beer yeast, so adding this second yeast will not impact the flavor much.

4) Add simple syrup.
Sometimes the yeast needs a little kick in the pants to get going. If you are adding yeast, then it's easy to add a little extra sugar to make sure the yeast starts up.

5) Add yeast nutrients.
Especially if the beer was under pitched the yeast can run out of nutrients. It takes special proteins for yeast to convert long sugar chains found in malt extract and worts generated from high mash temperatures. The yeast nutrients will give the yeast the proteins that they have depleted.

6) Add beano
Beano will break the longer sugar chains into shorter ones. So if the yeast in the fermenter cannot digest the long chains this will help them continue their job of conversion.

Other ways to fix the high final gravity without restarting fermentation
7) Dilute the beer
A final gravity of 1.020 will taste pretty sweet, but if diluted to 1.015 it might not bee so bad. The hop bitterness and the flavor will also be diluted, making it a different beer, but this may make it drinkable.

8) Add hops
A little bit of bitter will balance out the maltyness. You could add a couple of ounces of hops right into the fermenter to dry hop the beer, or make a hop tea. Either boil the hops in a approximately a 1.020 wort for 30-60 minutes to get some bitterness, or steep them for about 10 minutes in water to just get the earthy flavor.

9) Add fruit
If it's already sweet, then run with it. Fruit, by itself, is sour in beer because most of the simple sugars that they contain are fermented into alcohol, so having some malty sweetness will make a beer that the lady folk will love.

10) bottle it.
If all else fails, or you decide to leave it for other reasons, change the style name. Maybe the recipe was for a Porter but now you have a Dunkel. Maybe your American Lager is a Bohemian Pilsener.
 
To answer the direct questio. Yes, you can bottle it even if it stalled. You don't need to add more yeast.

A mash temp of 158 will leave a beer pretty malty. In my experience, with a 60min mash, every degree above 153 yields 2% less attenuation, So at 158 you are 10% less fermentable. US-05 attenuates to about 75% so you could expect 65% attenuation which puts you at a final gravity of 1.028.

My guess is that was a typo on the recipe. It was probably supposed to be 150.

Here's a post on temperatures:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/10/mash-temperature-and-thermometers.html

There are several things you can try to restart it, and several options to save it.
preview of post:

Top 10 ways to fix a stalled fermentation.
1) Give the fermenter a swirl.
Try the easy things first. You might be able to squeeze a few more points out of the fermentation by gently coaxing the yeast back into suspension.

2) Move the fermenter to a warmer area.
Fermentation temperature can change attenuation by about 2%. That might be enough to get over the line from cloyings to malty.

3) Repitch with a higher attenuating yeast
Champagne yeasts will ferment simple sugars to completely dry. Try adding a packet of EC-1118. At this point in the fermentation the flavors have already been added by the beer yeast, so adding this second yeast will not impact the flavor much.

4) Add simple syrup.
Sometimes the yeast needs a little kick in the pants to get going. If you are adding yeast, then it's easy to add a little extra sugar to make sure the yeast starts up.

5) Add yeast nutrients.
Especially if the beer was under pitched the yeast can run out of nutrients. It takes special proteins for yeast to convert long sugar chains found in malt extract and worts generated from high mash temperatures. The yeast nutrients will give the yeast the proteins that they have depleted.

6) Add beano
Beano will break the longer sugar chains into shorter ones. So if the yeast in the fermenter cannot digest the long chains this will help them continue their job of conversion.

Other ways to fix the high final gravity without restarting fermentation
7) Dilute the beer
A final gravity of 1.020 will taste pretty sweet, but if diluted to 1.015 it might not bee so bad. The hop bitterness and the flavor will also be diluted, making it a different beer, but this may make it drinkable.

8) Add hops
A little bit of bitter will balance out the maltyness. You could add a couple of ounces of hops right into the fermenter to dry hop the beer, or make a hop tea. Either boil the hops in a approximately a 1.020 wort for 30-60 minutes to get some bitterness, or steep them for about 10 minutes in water to just get the earthy flavor.

9) Add fruit
If it's already sweet, then run with it. Fruit, by itself, is sour in beer because most of the simple sugars that they contain are fermented into alcohol, so having some malty sweetness will make a beer that the lady folk will love.

10) bottle it.
If all else fails, or you decide to leave it for other reasons, change the style name. Maybe the recipe was for a Porter but now you have a Dunkel. Maybe your American Lager is a Bohemian Pilsener.

Lots of great info here and in other posts. If I'm wanting to finish out at 1.018, would the champagne yeast take me too far past that? Currently the beer tastes really good. Also, would GasX work instead of Beano?
 
Champagne yeast is pretty cheep and quick if you have a home brew shop near you. I would try that first. Keep in mind that Champagne yeast is designed to ferment Simple Sugars dry, but not nessisarily the long chains in your beer. I think it's worth a try. Beano contains the enzyme alpha-galactosidase. Gas-X uses Simethicone. I'm not sure that thouse would have the same effect. The enzyme in beano acts like the alpha amylase enzyme in malt. Lots of people don't recomend beano becaue it can bring you all the way to 1.000.
 
Champagne yeast is pretty cheep and quick if you have a home brew shop near you. I would try that first. Keep in mind that Champagne yeast is designed to ferment Simple Sugars dry, but not nessisarily the long chains in your beer. I think it's worth a try. Beano contains the enzyme alpha-galactosidase. Gas-X uses Simethicone. I'm not sure that thouse would have the same effect. The enzyme in beano acts like the alpha amylase enzyme in malt. Lots of people don't recomend beano becaue it can bring you all the way to 1.000.

Yeah I'll stay away from the GasX. I actually have champagne yeast on hand. Should I just try a full rehydrated packet or half of one or what? Do it now or wait til bottling and just a tiny bit?
 
If you are going to change the yeast, I would do it now. If they attenuate differently you could end up with bottle bombs. I would re-hydrate in warm water and pitch a whole pack. It's a stressful environment in there now. High alcohol no more simple sugars.
 
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