first high gravity beer

Hello,

I made a Triple IPA and got an OG of 1.102. This was brewed on 3/12.

It has still be slowly bubbling and I just took a gravity reading and it is at 1.040. Still slowly bubbling.

This is the biggest beer i ever made. I am hoping it ferments down to 1.020.

Here is my question. Saturday will be 3 weeks....does 1.040 seem about right for 3 weeks? (i read fermentation slows down as alcohol goes up).
I know to not worry about the bubbling and to take gravity readings, just was curious of your thoughts if you brewed something this big before.

I used a big starter of WLP001 and it has been about 65 degrees.

Thanks

That seems a bit slow to me. If you are really worried about it you could always pitch another starter of 001. That's a really big beer.

alright...i have some more 001 here...i'll make a starter tonight and get it on the stir plate

IMHO, if you heat it up to get the yeast going again you might get some off flavors. So your best bet would be to pitch a nice active starter and finish is out.

I think 1.040 is probably your FG at this point. It sounds like you agree with that seeing as you plan to repitch.

It seems like it was hinted at by others, but just a thought about the alternative - rousing your current yeast cake and increasing the fermentation temperature...

pjk49202 mentions not heating things up but there seem to be different opinions about this. If you look around, many people will ramp up temps after the bulk of primary is done in order to help finish primary fermentation and also to aid in the subsequent normal yeast "clean-up" processes. From what I understand, the thought is that the clean-up is felt to happen faster at these slightly higher temperatures. Also, the bulk of any off-flavors that would occur from higher fermentation temps (esters or fusels) would have formed early in fermentation and so off-flavor production at the new, higher temp, shouldn't be an issue in late primary phase.

Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong about all of this.

I am currently trying this on a 1.098 OG that I brewed Saturday. It is now at 1.021 having spent 5 days at 65 and 1.5 days at 70 degrees. I realize 5 days may be earlier than many would suggest for increasing temps but I really only did it to make room for another beer in my fermentation frig. My goal is an FG of 1.015 on the 1.098 beer (lofty goal I know). If I don't get to 1.015, I hope it at least does not have off-flavors...

Time will tell.

pjk49202 said:

IMHO, if you heat it up to get the yeast going again you might get some off flavors. So your best bet would be to pitch a nice active starter and finish is out.

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That's crazy talk. Heating up a batch towards the end of fermentation is great. I frequently boost to 72-75. I'd do this before pitching more yeast.

But also, if this beer is all-malt, I'm not optimistic about you hitting 1.020 FG.

All my big beers I start out on the cool side and crank them up to the mid-high 70's and the end of fermentation. From what I read and the breweries I have visited most do it that way and I have never got any off flavors from that. Now you wouldn’t want to crank up the temp on a small pale but for a big beer high temps at the end is a good thing. As for re-pitching you can but you will need a huge starter due to the alcohol content already in the beer, just pitching a 1-2 liter starter in that beer is probably not going to kick start it. I would make as big of a starter as you can then decant it. Rouse the fermenter and dump the starter and bump up the temp a few degrees. hopefully it will start up again. If you have any yeast energizer or nutrients add some also. Good luck!

I've read (but never done it) that racking onto a big glob of yeast from a just-completed batch is a good helper in your situation. I think I may have also read before that if you could rouse your whole yeast glob back up into your beer (with a minimal uptake of O2 that the same thing could happen).

What was your mash temperature? Grain bill? Could be it's done, if you mashed high or had a lot of less-fermentable malts in there.

kanzimonson said:

That's crazy talk. Heating up a batch towards the end of fermentation is great. I frequently boost to 72-75. I'd do this before pitching more yeast.

But also, if this beer is all-malt, I'm not optimistic about you hitting 1.020 FG.

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+1 to everything here.