ayrton
Well-Known Member
Recipe is here.
I tried every damned thing I could think of with this batch. It just will NOT ferment correctly. It refuses to drop below 1.036 or so. I even re-pitched another vial of a different type of yeast, and STILL I have nothing. Temperature has been between 65 - 70 the entire time (see below for a possible exception). I've never had a beer behave so strangely! I do have several ideas that might account for this stuck-in-the-mud fermentation:
1) I picked the hops in September from my aunt-in-law's vines. She uses some sort of insecticide, but I made sure to rinse them before drying them and then sticking them in the freezer until late December. Not sure if that could account for anything or not. The lupulins were still bright yellow and the hops smelled great during the boil, though, so I can't tell.
2) The water I used this time was from my tap, but it was run through a Brita filter. The water in my town is pretty heavily chlorinated, and while my filter is supposed to remove that, it may have done so insufficiently. This one seems unlikely, though, because I've had good batches using my water in the past.
3) The temperature in my kitchen is always between 65 and 70 degrees, but I can't tell if it's a little cooler at the floor level. I put the carboy in a closet for a couple days and nothing happened. Still, though, other batches have always been fine, so why should this one be any different?
At any rate, it's going to be a dark, swirling whirlpool in my sink tonight. Die, you evil batch of unfermentable goop.
I tried every damned thing I could think of with this batch. It just will NOT ferment correctly. It refuses to drop below 1.036 or so. I even re-pitched another vial of a different type of yeast, and STILL I have nothing. Temperature has been between 65 - 70 the entire time (see below for a possible exception). I've never had a beer behave so strangely! I do have several ideas that might account for this stuck-in-the-mud fermentation:
1) I picked the hops in September from my aunt-in-law's vines. She uses some sort of insecticide, but I made sure to rinse them before drying them and then sticking them in the freezer until late December. Not sure if that could account for anything or not. The lupulins were still bright yellow and the hops smelled great during the boil, though, so I can't tell.
2) The water I used this time was from my tap, but it was run through a Brita filter. The water in my town is pretty heavily chlorinated, and while my filter is supposed to remove that, it may have done so insufficiently. This one seems unlikely, though, because I've had good batches using my water in the past.
3) The temperature in my kitchen is always between 65 and 70 degrees, but I can't tell if it's a little cooler at the floor level. I put the carboy in a closet for a couple days and nothing happened. Still, though, other batches have always been fine, so why should this one be any different?
At any rate, it's going to be a dark, swirling whirlpool in my sink tonight. Die, you evil batch of unfermentable goop.
I hope you are correct because it did taste great. I was wondering if it would carbonate if the yeast had all pooped out - I will know in a week when I try one out. The recipe added maltodextrine which I have never used before. Is this a fermentable sugar? Could using it raise the FG?
