Hi!
First, thanks for the great resource, I've been creeping your forums for a while, ever since I started homebrewing. First time I've needed to post though.
We brewed a Belgian wit ale about 5 weeks ago using a partial mash recipe. The OG was pretty good at 1.053 (recipe estimated 1.048). For the first week or so it was fermenting like crazy, clogging airlock after airlock. After 2 weeks the fermentation died down a bit and during the third week, I tested the gravity 3 times with a day or two in between and found that the gravity stopped changing, but it was considerably higher than I expected: 1.022 (recipe estimated 1.010).
Since it was unchanged for so long, like I usually do, I racked it to secondary.
Then I thought that this seemed pretty high -- so I ran the numbers. I only got an apparent attenuation of only 58.5% when the yeast is expected to 74-78% (White Labs Belgian Wit 400). So I wasn't sure what was up.
I started reading about the yeast I saw that people have found it temperamental and needed to give it a swirl every once in a while. Well I didn't do this (thats what I get for reading after the fact).
Anyway I figured there would be more sugars to breakdown, so at the advice of the HBS I ordered this from, I pitched Nottingham and some pitchable yeast nutrient.
48 hours later no observable fermentation.
So here's what I think went wrong: This was the first time I used a propane burner (my new apartment has convection burners ) and I'm fairly certain I overheated the mash which resulted in a lot of unfermentable sugars in the wort. At least thats what I've come up with after reading through a number of posts here. The brew pot I used was deeper than the one I've traditionally used so I used a crappy comes-in-the-box thermometer instead of my usual one. I think the unfermentables probably account for the higher OG and the higher SG I currently have.
So my questions are this:
1. Does this sound right? My guess as to what went wrong?
2. I currently have amylase enzyme scheduled to be delivered tomorrow, should I throw this in there in attempt to lower the gravity? 1.022 seems really high to me.
3. Any other tips / suggestions?
Thanks again for the great resource, and thanks in advance.
First, thanks for the great resource, I've been creeping your forums for a while, ever since I started homebrewing. First time I've needed to post though.
We brewed a Belgian wit ale about 5 weeks ago using a partial mash recipe. The OG was pretty good at 1.053 (recipe estimated 1.048). For the first week or so it was fermenting like crazy, clogging airlock after airlock. After 2 weeks the fermentation died down a bit and during the third week, I tested the gravity 3 times with a day or two in between and found that the gravity stopped changing, but it was considerably higher than I expected: 1.022 (recipe estimated 1.010).
Since it was unchanged for so long, like I usually do, I racked it to secondary.
Then I thought that this seemed pretty high -- so I ran the numbers. I only got an apparent attenuation of only 58.5% when the yeast is expected to 74-78% (White Labs Belgian Wit 400). So I wasn't sure what was up.
I started reading about the yeast I saw that people have found it temperamental and needed to give it a swirl every once in a while. Well I didn't do this (thats what I get for reading after the fact).
Anyway I figured there would be more sugars to breakdown, so at the advice of the HBS I ordered this from, I pitched Nottingham and some pitchable yeast nutrient.
48 hours later no observable fermentation.
So here's what I think went wrong: This was the first time I used a propane burner (my new apartment has convection burners ) and I'm fairly certain I overheated the mash which resulted in a lot of unfermentable sugars in the wort. At least thats what I've come up with after reading through a number of posts here. The brew pot I used was deeper than the one I've traditionally used so I used a crappy comes-in-the-box thermometer instead of my usual one. I think the unfermentables probably account for the higher OG and the higher SG I currently have.
So my questions are this:
1. Does this sound right? My guess as to what went wrong?
2. I currently have amylase enzyme scheduled to be delivered tomorrow, should I throw this in there in attempt to lower the gravity? 1.022 seems really high to me.
3. Any other tips / suggestions?
Thanks again for the great resource, and thanks in advance.