Is our beer... dead?

My husband and I are on our third homebrew batch and having an issue, that I think is due to the cold.

We're making a Belgian Double, using the Ballast point recipe, and visible fermentation took about a week to begin and went for two weeks even though the temp dropped to close to sixty for a while and then below. After two weeks, with no visible fermentation for 24 hours or so, and a temp of 58 we took a specific gravity reading and it was 1.031. The OG was 1.044 so this seemed wrong to us.

The yeast we are using is WL trappist ale yeast which according to their website does best at 65-72 degrees so we figured we had it too cold for the last week. For the past 48 hours we have warmed it up and shook it a few times and its still not doing much. A few bubbles right after we shake it, that's it.

Did we kill this yeast? Is it possible to wake it up through heating shaking? Will it just take another couple of weeks?

Also wee live in Japan and have pretty terrible insulation and high energy costs so its cold in our house - any non electric ideas to warm it up this beer would be really appreciated too!

At what temp did you pitch the yeast? Did you make a starter?

We didn't make a starter...and we pitched it at 69F. It was liquid yeast (I have no idea if that matters)

Sounds like you've got it right. The yeast got too cold and slowed down. There are plenty of options, but do need to warm it up for sure. Would a heating blanket be acceptable, energy-wise? Otherwise you could take it to bed with you!

As far as getting the fermentation re-started, you can rouse the yeast. With some highly flocculent strains (e.g. Wy1968) I have had to stir the yeast back into suspension to get a fermentation past 1.025. I assume your yeast have mostly flocculated out by now. The bubbles you see are likely just residual CO2 off-gassing from the agitation. If you can't get the yeast to get active again, you could re-pitch. And there are more extreme measures you can take too.

Something else seems wrong here too. You said 1.044. I'm not sure exactly what recipe you used, but some I see online with that name would have a much higher OG than that (as a Belgian double should). It's possible that the OG measurement was off because of a common stratification problem with measuring topped off extract batches (need to stir really well before measuring)

Your not going to see anything. Just keep it warm, and check back in a week or more to see if the gravity dropped any more. Unless you froze your fermenter, or boiled it, you didn't kill your yeast. All dropping temp does is make it go dormant, do you die when you go dormant every night? No, you wake up the next morning and get back to work Let the yeast warm up, it may take a few day for them to get up to speed, and let them do their thing.

Oh I'm glad its sleeping and not dead

Thanks for the good advice guys! So I'll just keep it warm and let the yeast keep at it and if that doesn't work I'll repitch it. Hopefully just warming it will work.

I think a heating blanket would work for us too.. thank you!

I accidently dropped an ale (Safale-05) into the low 50's for a week and the yeast took a nap. I warmed things back up to 65 and gave them a gentle swirl. They got back to work and finished the beer out in a week. You should be okay.

I have no useful comment on your post, but I'm picturing (in my head) the conversation that would happen if I tried to take an electric heating blanket off the bed to wrap around my beer fermenter.

The wife is a good sport, but that might be a stretch.

Haha! I love this beer as much as my husband but this beer would need to have her own blanket!

I'm actually using a normal blanket (non electric) with mine to just kind of shield it from the colder temps. I wrapped it up in the blanket after I finished brewing and so far so good. I actually need to take the blanket off my first fermenter and wrap my currently bubbling fermenter.

thedeboers said:

O

I think a heating blanket would work for us too.. thank you!

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Where in Japan are you??

I know that here, in Kansai, specifically Osaka, we have "Conan" and "Homes" DIY and general home goods stores. I picked up a couple of hiza kake denki mofu(throw over heated blankets) which are about 140cm X 90cm, really cheap to run and they have graduated controllers so you can raise or lower the temp. Used a couple last winter, and this winter too, and they've yielded great results. Used them to warm up the water of a swamp cooler to my desired temp (say 17 degC) which is then used to keep the brews at a warmer temp. Without the swamp cooler will give a quicker temp raise but monitoring can be a bit hit and miss.

I also have a bigger heated blanket, with a big downy over the top, in the bottom of the oshi-ire(traditional closet where most people keep their bedding) in our wa sh!tsu, and that is excellent for maintaining 21-23 degC for carbing and conditioning after bottling.

Blankets around your beer will help keep it 1-2 degrees warmer than nothing. Maybe more when fermentation is active. There are other options tho. You could splash out on a heat pad or belt. Put blankets on it with the heat pad and it will definitely stay warm. One other way to heat it up is to put it in a large bucket of water with an aquarium heater. I think this will use less electricity than it would to heat the room, but it would keep the water and therefore the fermenter warm. If you put all that in a big cardboard box, you could then cover that with blankets as well.

Just get creative with it and you should find cheap ways to warm it up.

Good luck!

HZ99

Ogri - we're about an hour south east of Tokyo and we have Homes here but I don't know about Conan. We're actually planning on heading to our Homes this weekend so I'm going to look for hiza kake denki mofu, thanks for the tip.

Until then I have it in warm water that I'm reheating every few hours, no aquarium heater, sadly!

Man Ogri, you've been a part of us for a year, and I've never paid attention to your location, and realized you were in Japan.

thedeboers said:

Ogri - we're about an hour south east of Tokyo and we have Homes here but I don't know about Conan. We're actually planning on heading to our Homes this weekend so I'm going to look for hiza kake denki mofu, thanks for the tip.

Until then I have it in warm water that I'm reheating every few hours, no aquarium heater, sadly!

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The ones I have were from Conan and only set me back about ¥1,280 a piece.
When I inquired about aquarium heaters at Conan I was told that they are pretty heavy on electricity usage. The denki kake hiza mofu use something
like 0.4 to 0.7 yen an hour.
So you are out in the sticks of Chiba?? There's another major home improvement store up that way I think. Cainz, or something like that, maybe.

Revvy said:

Man Ogri, you've been a part of us for a year, and I've never paid attention to your location, and realized you were in Japan.

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Due to the quality and volume of advice you freely propagate on HBT I'll overlook your lack of attention to that detail:fro:

We're actually closer to Kamakura, so there are a few options that I think will have the blanket. Thanks again!

We went to homes this weekend and got an aquarium thermometer... it seemed like our best bet for being able to regulate the temperature. It's great. We set it up 5 days ago and the beer started bubbling regularly and now is bubbling once every four minutes or so, so it's slowing down again. I just took a specific gravity reading and got 1.028.

Does this seem normal for a Belgian Double? Does anyone have a good resource for a list of target specific gravitys (my recipe didn't have one)? And if my original gravity reading was messed up (we recorded it as 1.031 which I think was wrong).... how can I know what the specific gravity/alcohol content is now?

thedeboers said:

We went to homes this weekend and got an aquarium thermometer... it seemed like our best bet for being able to regulate the temperature. It's great. We set it up 5 days ago and the beer started bubbling regularly and now is bubbling once every four minutes or so, so it's slowing down again. I just took a specific gravity reading and got 1.028.

Does this seem normal for a Belgian Double? Does anyone have a good resource for a list of target specific gravitys (my recipe didn't have one)? And if my original gravity reading was messed up (we recorded it as 1.031 which I think was wrong).... how can I know what the specific gravity/alcohol content is now?

Click to expand...

If you list up your fermentables for this batch and the exact volume of wort that went into your fermenter it's possible to work out what the OG should have been.
When you measured your present specific gravity what was the temperature of the sample. If it was a few degrees warmer than 20C your hydrometer would sit high in the sample and you'd see a higher reading.

Ok - forgive me, I'm still kind of new so here is everything - I think fermentables is just the malt and yeast but wasn't 100% sure

12 # pale Liquid malt extract
1# liquid belgian candi syrup
1# caravienne
1/2# special B
1.5oz northern brewer (10.6%aa)
1oz fuggles (4.8%aa)
white labs trappist ale yeast

the present temp was 66 degrees so not about 20C and I don't have an exact wort amount - we boiled 1.5 gallons of water to make the wort and then added room temp water to the fermenter to make it 5 gallons.

Thank you!

OK, here's what I got from entering that lot into beer calculus;

Malt & Fermentables

% LB OZ °L PPG
83% 12 0 Pale Liquid Extract Boil 0° 36
7% 1 0 Belgian Candy Sugar Light Boil 0° 36
7% 1 0 CaraVienne Steep 21° 35
3% 0 8 Belgian Special B Mash 220° 30


Specific Gravity
1.099 OG
(1.088 to 1.103)
23.5° Plato
1.025 FG
(1.022 to 1.027)
6.3° Plato
Color
14° SRM
28° EBC
Copper to Red/Lt. Brown
Mash Efficiency
75 %
Steep Efficiency
37.5%

Hops

Use Time OZ Hop Variety AA » IBU
boil 60 min 1 Fuggles ~ pellet 4.5 » 11.9
boil 60 min 1.500 Northern Brewer ~ pellet 8.5 » 33.8

Select an ingredient

Add
Bitterness
51 IBU
ƒ: Tinseth
17 HBU
BU:GU
0.52
Yeast


White Labs Trappist Ale (WLP500)

Add
Alcohol
9.9% ABV
8% ABW
Calories
326
per 12 oz.
Miscellaneous Ingredients

Assuming your volume into the fermenter was 5 (US) gallons your OG would have been roughly 1.099 although anywhere from 1.088 to 1.103 might be possible (Did you actually mash the special B?? It's not a huge amount and wouldn't make a big difference to the OG but thought I'd ask) Nearly all of your gravity points are from liquid extracts and candi sugar so you should have got close.

It also looks like a finishing Gravity of 1.025 would be spot on and anywhere from 1.022 to 1.027 would be possible.

I don't know what your hop addition schedule was so I put the whole 1.5 Oz of NB and the 1 Oz of fuggles in at the beginning of the boil (60 minutes) and even then it's looking kinda sweet, but that might be what you were after.


Here's a link to hopville.com, beer calculus Register and you can save your recipes and use this to help you see what your Malt/fermentables and hop additions are doing to affect the balance of your brew, as well as tinker around trying to concoct various different recipes..

By the way, with a partial boil of 1.5 gallons your hop utilisation is going to be lower than shown in hopville so I think this will be a very sweet beer. Not necessarily bad for a Belgian dubbel. I'm reasonably sure that hopville calculates your IBUs based on a full volume boil.

I came up with about 1.090 for a OG based in 75% efficiency. Should put you currently around 7.5-8%ABV