Canadian-Belgian (unibroue?) yeast

I brewed a triple with this yeast last weekend. I made a starter, about 1g, chilled and decanted. Pitched into 10.5g of 1.074 wort at 65F. Recipe was basically Jamil's BCS tripel, almost all pilsner malt, but I mashed at 151 instead of 149 or whatever he's got. Oxygenated with a paint-stirrer type set up, getting a good vortex for close to a minute, which is my usual oxygenation routine.

After seven days, the wort is at 1.030. After two days, I raised the ferment temp to 68, and after five days bumped it to 72. Is this yeast just really slow, or what?

I'm going to give it another few days, and if it still isn't down, I'm thinking about whipping up some US-05 and pitching it at high krausen to see if that knocks it down.

was the yeast harvested dregs or packaged?

Give it some time. Big beers can take a while. My last RIS dropped over 5 points between week 6 and 12. Give the carboy a swirl if the yeast look like they're floccing out heavily.

PintOfBitter said:

was the yeast harvested dregs or packaged?

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Packaged, wyeast smack pack.

Amusing the single smack pack was super fresh.

According to the Mr. Malty calculator you needed a to make a 5 gallons starter for that size batch. 2 gallons if you use a stir plate.

So you have probably under pitched. It's gonna take longer to ferment. Make sure you keep the temps up or it will quit on you. If it gets stuck, I doubt throwing dry yeast in there will get it re-started. Once there is alcohol present and the O2 is depleted, it's much harder to get the yeast to grow. I'd keep my fingers crossed and give the original yeast plenty of time to finish what they started.

Is there still a good krausen on top?

Hmm, you know I didn't even bother looking at mrmalty. What I actually did is made a 1g starter, let it ferment out, decanted, added another 1g of wort, and again let it ferment out. Not sure how much growth I would've gotten out of the second step, but I wasn't thinking I'd need much more than a 1g starter anyways. That'll teach me to make such an assumption.

Not much of a krausen on top, it was bubbling once every ten-fifteen seconds or so yesterday, so it's still chugging along. I just expected it to get down farther in a shorter amount of time, but underpitching helps explain a lot.

maida7 said:

Amusing the single smack pack was super fresh.

According to the Mr. Malty calculator you needed a to make a 5 gallons starter for that size batch. 2 gallons if you use a stir plate.

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5 gallon starter?! I think you mean 5 liter... which is a bit over one gallon.

I recently used this yeast for a big belgian blonde... 1.066 OG. It was down to 1.008 after about 2 weeks. I started it at about 66 and slowly raised it to 75 over the course of a week, and then just let it do its own thing after that. This yeast may be a bit slow, but it will definitely attenuate if you treat it right. I wouldn't worry.

No, I meant 5 GALLONS or 19 liters.

At least that's what the calculator recommends.

Rundownhouse said:

Hmm, you know I didn't even bother looking at mrmalty. What I actually did is made a 1g starter, let it ferment out, decanted, added another 1g of wort, and again let it ferment out.

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This is a good method. BUT you must chill it in the fridge for 24 hours before you decant. If you don't fully chill it, you could be pouring away a bunch of your yeast. Same deal when you decant before pitching.

Also, make a stir plate. It will make your starter sizes much more manageable. They are fairly easy to make with a computer fan, a cell phone charger and a hard drive magnet. If you have a junk computer you probably have all the parts for a stir plate.

jaba said:

5 gallon starter?! I think you mean 5 liter... which is a bit over one gallon.

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My first thought was similar, so I checked the calc, and maida was spot on. Had no idea I was so far off. I know some people have quibbles with mrmalty, but if it says 5g and I made 1g, he's probably closer to the correct amount than I am, issues aside.

maida, I chilled for at least that long before decanting, if not a bit longer. I now think this is just a pitching issue, not something with this yeast in particular. I'm in no rush on the beer or the carboys it's in, so I can let it sit to finish more or less as long as needed, I was just surprised by attenuation only being a ~60% after seven days at ~70F temps.

I think I've got all the stuff for a stir plate build, it's just way down on the list of stuff to do.

Rundownhouse said:

My first thought was similar, so I checked the calc, and maida was spot on. Had no idea I was so far off. I know some people have quibbles with mrmalty, but if it says 5g and I made 1g, he's probably closer to the correct amount than I am, issues aside.

maida, I chilled for at least that long before decanting, if not a bit longer. I now think this is just a pitching issue, not something with this yeast in particular. I'm in no rush on the beer or the carboys it's in, so I can let it sit to finish more or less as long as needed, I was just surprised by attenuation only being a ~60% after seven days at ~70F temps.

I think I've got all the stuff for a stir plate build, it's just way down on the list of stuff to do.

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Ah, i've never bothered to mess with the Growth Factor slider on mr malty. I guess that's where my error came in. Good to know for the future.

I had a lot of weird krausen activity when I used this yeast too. For the first day or two there was a lot, then it all kind of fell back in, but there was still a ton of activity in the fermenter.

The one downside of the mrmalty calculator is it doesn't figure for a 2 step starter. Check out this one on the Wyeast site. http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_pitchrate.cfm

Just an update. Today I've got one carboy at ~1.026 and the other is at ~1.015. I'll check on it again in a week or so and if it still isn't dry enough I'll try some servomyces or lager yeast or both on it, or something.

One carboy at 1.016, the other at 1.012. As usual, RDWHAHB is the rule of the day. Both hydro samples tasted a little boozy, but I'm not too worried. Thanks for all the help, everyone.