Strange fermentation behavior

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Chadwick

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Brewed my 8th batch this year 5 days ago and the fermentation activity is very different from what I'm used to seeing. Using US-05 yeast I usually see plenty of activity at 24hrs after dry pitching the yeast. This time I didn't see any activity outside of 1 very small creeping bubble per minute until I hit the 36hr mark. At that point it seemed to take off and act like a normal fermentation, then at 48hrs it stopped. I know I can't tell much unless I take a gravity reading, which I'll do in two more days, but I have to tell you that I suspicious something isn't quite right.

This brew is different than all my other brews by one factor. There is a LOT of honey in it. Like 6lbs of the stuff. I want to taste the honey. However, is there something about honey that screws with fermentation?
 
10lbs American pale malt
6lbs honey
1lb cara red crystal
Hops are Centennial and Cascade
1/2 oz Centennial at 60min
1/2 oz Cent and 1oz Cascade at 30
1oz Cent and another 1oz Cascade at flameout

The boil was 90min with the honey added at about 75min.

Attenuation with the pale malt wasn't to great. OG at pitch was 1.075

I'm shooting for an IPA with lots of honey flavor. I don't want it to be faint, thus the huge honey additions. Plus, I happen to have a lot of honey on hand and although I love honey, I'm not a huge fan of mead.
 
I'm guessing its fine ...I've seen US -05 do different stuff

If you want honey flavor use honey malt...all the honey will ferment out and won't add a lot of flavor I know from experience
 
Shouldn't you add yest nutrients with lots of honey in a recipe? It might not have enough minerals or other essential nutrients. Try adding some.

At this point, I wouldn't add anything or mess with it other than taking a gravity reading after about a week.

+1 on using honey malt (up to 10%) instead of honey. That's one heck of a lot of honey you added, but I'm not sure that you're going to end up with the flavor profile you seek.
 
Two things that caused this: 1) you underpitched; and 2) you have way too many simple sugars.

Based on your recipe (assuming 6 gallons after 90 minute boil and 70% efficiency), you should be in the 1.093 range. Since you only had around 1.075, you had 50% efficiency, which is really bad, almost unbelievable. Meaning, your gravity reading might be slightly low, or you took your hydrometer reading at a higher temperature than its reference. Even if your 1.075 was correct, 1 pack of US-05 is not enough for 5 gallons of 1.075 wort.

Either way, with 6# honey in that batch, you're getting 42 of your 75 points from honey, which is primarily simple sugars (glucose and fructose). Also, you typically want to stay less than 20% on simple sugars in your grain bill. You're around 35% here with 6#.

The reason fermentation took much longer to start is the result of a longer lag phase as a result of your underpitching. Additionally, the reason you experienced a very short duration fermentation was due to the percentage of simple sugars present. The yeast really rocket through the simple sugars first before working on more complex sugars such as maltose and maltotriose.
 
The reason fermentation took much longer to start is the result of a longer lag phase as a result of your underpitching. Additionally, the reason you experienced a very short duration fermentation was due to the percentage of simple sugars present. The yeast really rocket through the simple sugars first before working on more complex sugars such as maltose and maltotriose.

Good points.

I've never tested the theory, but I've heard from different folks that, if you give the yeast too much simple sugar to feast on, they get used to eating those and stall out when they run out of them and hit the maltose. That's why you don't make your starter wort out of table sugar or honey.
 
Looks like another brew on the fritz. I just removed the airlock to take a look inside, krausen is still several inches thick. I'll wait until it falls and see what I get on the hydrometer. It smells nice. No hint of honey aroma that I can detect.
 

I've heard from different folks that, if you give the yeast too much simple sugar to feast on, they get used to eating those and stall out when they run out of them and hit the maltose. That's why you don't make your starter wort out of table sugar or honey.

That's the exact point I wast trying to make..I guess I didn't? Honey contains something like 68% fructose and glucose, both of which are monosaccharides (single chained sugars). The yeast will metabolize these sugars first, which occur very quickly. This results in a quick fermentation due to the ease of metabolizing the simple sugars, but also metabolizing that many simple sugars strains the yeast to make it harder to metabolize the remaining complex sugars.

In this case, the OP's wort contains a large percentage of simple sugars (42 points out of the 75, is something like 56% of the fermentable sugars are most likely glucose/fructose instead of maltose).
 
Quick question, isn't corn sugar a simple sugar too? In the past I've used generous portions of it without an issue.

Also, I seem to be failing in a huge way with my attenuation of grains. I order them from morebeer pre-crushed and I'm using a brew bag to do my mash on a kitchen range. I'm finding that I'm consistently getting poor attenuation despite doing very long mashes with temps in the 155F range. By very long, I'm talking 1 1/2 hours. Plenty of stirring the whole time. I'm beginning to wonder if this mash-in-a-bag thing is working at all.
 
Yes, corn sugar is D-glucose, which is a simple sugar. Have you used 6# of corn sugar before and not experience a quick ferment?

Are you sparging after you mash to wash residual sugars? That should really improve your efficiency. Also, you could have a bad hydrometer. Check it in water, preferably distilled.
 
If you are getting poor attenuation then it's probably because you are mashing at 155F. That is pretty high especially if you are trying to make drier beers. With that much simple sugar, though, it probably actually helps because the maltiness will help balance out the dryness that can be produced from simple sugars.

If you are speaking of your efficiency being bad then that can be for various reasons. If you do mean bad efficiency then post your process and we can help.
 
Also, if you are using a lot of simple sugars the yeast will ferment those first and "get used" to fermenting them. This can cause them to give up early on the more complex grain sugars which is possible why your attenuation might be bad. Under pitching can do this too. If your brew is going to be above 1070ish then throw in two dry packets of yeast. Temperature can play a role too. What temp are you fermenting at?
 
I'm going to start a new thread about my process in general. I think this would be the best way to address this issue. Thanks folks for the replies. As always, this community is an invaluable resource.
 
Update. This brew has been in the bottles for for a week now. I sampled one last night. I understand that it isn't quite ready, but I'm really curious to see how this is shaping up.

Conclusions:
-Hop flavor went south. It smells like old socks. Tastes like I mashed with them too.
-The honey fermented out completely while leaving the astringent honey bite behind.
-Lesson learned in regards to using to much simple sugars. Last time I had this taste in a beer was when I did a lager 15 years ago using baking yeast, 10 year old canned LME, and a whole bag of cane sugar, and fermented it at 82 degrees.
-I must hide this beer. I cannot allow it to be discovered. Perhaps it will improve in 6 months. But I'm not going to count on it.

EDIT: Additional thoughts

I think this is like a cross between a beer and a very low quality mead. Already the twang is improving to the point where you can almost drink it if its cold enough and you are holding your breath. I will never again use more than a pound of honey in a beer.
 
Also, generally when you ferment with that much honey you have to let the brew age for a while to mellow out, hence why folks that make mead usually age it for a year.
 
Chadwick said:
I think this is like a cross between a beer and a very low quality mead. Already the twang is improving to the point where you can almost drink it if its cold enough and you are holding your breath. I will never again use more than a pound of honey in a beer.

A cross of beer and mead is called a braggot (or bracket). I'm a fan of both, and think the combination would taste pretty good (like you do it sounds like - a honey beer, with lots of honey flavor). I've never actually had one or brewed one yet, though, to confirm that. But, in reading about them, it sounds like you need to get your proportions right, and then use a yeast that can tolerate higher alcohol/OG.

For example, in Ken Schramm's "The Compleat Meadmaker" (an excellent text about all aspects of mead), his braggot recipe calls for 4 lbs pale malt and 0.5 lb crystal (or 3.3 lb pale LME or 3 lb pale DME for extract version) and 10 lbs honey for a 5 gal batch. He then uses Lalvin D-47 (12-14% alcohol tolerance).

So it sounds like you could look at it two ways: as many said above, you used too much honey (simple sugar) for the yeast you did use - they ate it all up first, then pooped out when it came to the bigger chain sugars. Or, you could say that you didn't use enough honey (and too much malt) for the yeast you should have used (base on the reading and recipe in Schramm - again, I have no personal experience with this)... But, remember that this give a more mead-like product (and 11-14ish% abv), so if its more of just a honey beer you're looking for (you did mention you're not a huge mead fan), I'm sure there are other recipes that are more beer-like, and less mead-y, that use less honey and more malt. I'd go with the above suggestions to use honey malt, and keep the honey to no more than 5-10% of total grist. And let me know if you do find a good honey beer recipe that works out -I would like to make one too - cheers!
 
Further Update:

This stuff is improving at a remarkable rate. The dirty ick sock smell is going away as well as the dirty sock taste. The astringent honey bite is mellowing. The hops are starting to shine. It is actually starting to taste like an IPA. All of this within 5 days since I last tasted it. I can only imagine it will improve more with time.

I'm still determined to never use this much honey again. However, once it improves some more I'll tell anyone that trys it that it's a Braggot style beer. LOL. Win again.
 
Yeah I was thinking the beer probably was a bit green when you tasted it. Usually at least a month to 6 weeks in the bottle and it will be pretty good (depending on the style) although it is usually pretty hard to wait that long! :mug:
 
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