Oxygenating wort

We oxygenated our wort for our first time. We did it at approximately 75 degrees. It was fermenting at a very high rate for 3 days and then stopped. Is this common? Brew is an IPA with OG of 91.

How did you oxygenate, shaking to carboy or pure o2 through a stone? If the OG was 1.091 I am sure it is still fermenting after 3 days, the yeast has probably plowed through most of your sugars but has some work to do. Dont judge fermentation by how active your airlock is, judge it by taking a gravity reading and see how far the beer has attenuated.

Leave it be and take a gravity reading at ~10 days, its a pretty big beer so it will take some time to attenuate and then for the years to clean up any by products of fermentation.

In all of my brews the vigorous fermenting dies out around 3 days. But the yeasts are still working, like Coff stated take a gravity reading at 10 days and see where your at.

We oxygenated with CO2 through a stone. This was our first time using the CO2. Thanks for the feedback . We will wait it out and see how it goes. Maybe the CO2 made the yeast much more active upfront.

C02=carbon dioxide. Need 02. Like the Red Benzomatic tanks you get from Lowes HomeDepot. How long did you run the O2?

I am assuming you meant o2 and not Co2, and yes by adding enough o2 your yeast have a more enjoyable environment for fermentation. Resulting in shorter lag times and cleaner beer.

Did you make a starter as well?

Yes O2! I meant O2. We oxygenated for a minute and it went off crazy for three days. We will check the readings this weekend and see where we are at. This is our biggest beer to date with 38 lbs of grain. We haven't done our own yeast starter yet. We decided to work on grains and hops first and then venture into yeast. I understand sanitation is key with yeast starters.

Wow no stater with a beer like that! What yeast did you use and did you use more than on pack/vial?

We just doubled up on the white labs. Expensive, but we aren't prepared for yeast starters yet.

you know you can save and wash (or not) the yeast cake from a 5%abv beer.

IMO, pitching the correct (or close to) amount of yeast is far more important then anything else besides sanitization and fermentation. Yeast starters are very easy and will result in much cleaner and better beer, especially big beers like you brewed. Aeration is important, but pitching the correct amount of yeast is probably more important.

TrippinTimmons said:

We just doubled up on the white labs. Expensive, but we aren't prepared for yeast starters yet.

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FWIW I use and would recomend mrmalty.com to estimate yeast pitch rates. It recommends 616 billion yeast cells for your wort (assuming 10 gal batch). Thats 6.4 vials of fresh 97% viable yeast (based on date). Thats why most folks will make a starter, pitch on top of a smaller beers yeast cake, re pitch from a slurry (yeast washing), or be lazy like me and use dry yeast (still check mrmalty to see how many).

Good Listening: BrewStrong on TheBrewingNetwork.com did a awesome series of 4 podcasts called "High Gravity Brewing" back in 8/2010 search the podcast archives.

Post back how it comes out TrippinT! I'd like to know how it turns out. Im impressed, mashing 38lbs of grain is not easy to do and hit your numbers. How big is your mash tun and what's your lautering system?

Prost! M8B

What was your fermentation temp. If you pitched at 75 and left it at that temp that could be why it finished quickly. What yeast was it also. IMHO, proper pitching rates and controlling fermentation temp are some of the most crucial things you can do to make great beer. O2 is for sure important especially on bigger beers.

10 days? A big beer like that needs to ferment for a few weeks. Particularly when the first 3 days were that vigorous, the yeast has a lot of cleanup to do. I wouldn't even touch it until at least 21 days have passed. Then dry hop for a week.

If you're in a real hurry you could start the dry hop after 14 days.

We have a 20 gallon mash tun with a homemade copper ring. We gravity feed sprinkle sparge. And then we usually go to our keggle for boil, but this time we had too much volume and had to reuse our mash tun as our boil pot. We are already outgrowing our system because we like big beers.

We put 2 vials of pacific ale WLP041 in one 5 gal and 2 vials California ale WLP001 in the other 5 gal.

We plan to dry hop in the secondary with cascade and perhaps even add some to the keg.

Thanks for everyone's info. We will let you know what happens.

Magic8ball - you were right about the yeast. We need to start reading up on yeast starters. And we should have probably pitched 3 vials each 5 gallon as you suggested. Our fermentation stopped after 3 vigorous days. We started with a gravity of 91 and ended at 30. Our goal was 19. Any suggestions on how we can bring down in the secondary. I've heard of using champagne yeast.

No! to wine yeast. Wine yeast is not a major maltose eater - it's a dextrose eater. You can use champagne yeast to bottle up high ABV beers when using simple sugars for priming, but it's not going to help you with a stuck fermentation. Your best bet is a high ABV yeast that attenuates really well and can work at increased temperatures (a saison or belgian strain might be your best friend), AND you will want to give it the best chance by either creating a starter from liquid or rehydrating according to manufacturers instructions.

Although, now that I re-read your post, you mention 1.030. This is a common FG people think they've achieved when using a refractometer to measure FG, and NOT compensating for the presence of alcohol. Are you by chance using a refractometer?

We are using a refractometer. We compensate for temp but never heard of doing so for alcohol. How do we do that? I've often thought, just from my drinking experience, that my beers are higher alcohol than I'm calculating.

Use this page for a quick calculator but you will need to know your starting brix/gravity:
http://seanterrill.com/2012/01/06/refractometer-calculator/

I find that the beersmith refractometer tool and the one posted above when averaged is a really close final gravity/ABV value. If you want to know spot-on then a hydrometer might be better for you. I personally use a refractometer and the aforementioned tools - they work well enough for me.

Edit: However, if I plug any of your numbers into refract calculators I'm seeing bone dry beer (~1.000) which I highly doubt is correct. You may need to bust out a hydrometer on this one.