Stuck Fermentation

Would appreciate your help on this one........
on 5/29/2008 i brewed an I.P.A. Muntons extract kit which started
to ferment vigorously the following day (muntons standard yeast).
A week later on 6/6/2008 i switched to secondary. The gravity reading was down to 8 brix from the initial 12 brix and didn't concern me much.
But after another 10 days the reading was still at 8 brix so i decided to throw the wort in the carboy of an ESB that i had just finished bottling and that had a nice s04 slurry in it thinking that this other yeast strain would surely attenuate by a lot the I.P.A. making a much better job than the original Muntons Yeast (attenuation should drop to 5,5 brix so that 6vol alcohol could be achieved).
Two days later the reading is still at 8 brix making me wonder if i had to aerate the wort again when i used the s04 slurry (obviously i didn't).
There is no sign of infection and the wort has a nice sweet taste and smell.
There is some bubbling so there must be something happening in there but the thing is that i expected to be seeing something more like............brix dropping
The temperature is definably more than it should be (72-74F) but the ESB fermented very well so i fail to see how this could be the problem.

I am open to suggestions.........

You never want to aerate once you pitch the yeast. You should try checking the FG before you rack to secondary. If you pull it off the yeast cake too early, I don't know if you can ever really getting it going again.

Sounds like initially you racked too early. I never rack to secondary until I am certain that fermentation is 80-90% complete. As for racking it onto another yeast cake, while not the method I would recommend (I would have just repitched some dry yeast), I'm not sure why it did not kick-start your fermentation unless it was well and truly finished already. You made the right decision not to re-aerate your beer, once fermentation has begun you want to minimize exposure to oxygen.

I have heard that swirling or gently shaking the sealed carboy can be ok though, so you can help stir up the yeast cake and knock off some from the sides.

I agree one week in the primary might not of been long enough, however I don't understand why it would of halted fermentation changing vessels. If anything I think it would restart it.

yup i racked too early being misled by some discussion about standard Muntons Yeast (wont do it again ).
I will try to lower the temperature a bit (time to fix that digital thermostat) and swirl gently the yeast cake. Love the challenge, hate the fact i had high expectations about this particular extract
Thank you all people, will keep you posted on this one

Taipans said:

I don't understand why it would of halted fermentation changing vessels. If anything I think it would restart it.

Click to expand...

When you rack to secondary you remove the beer from the yeast cake. The yeast on this cake are still active and still doing the job of fermentation. When you rack early the only yeast left are the ones still in suspension.

as Jaded says, you remove too much yeast from the brew, and the fraction left in suspension has a hell of a time fermenting what's left.

NEVER rack to secondary until fermentation is halted AND its close to the expected final gravity/brix reading.


That said...EVERYONE on this forum has messed up a batch, or two, or had bottles explode, or an infection caught em. They all teach us valuable lessons.

After swirling gently (nice tip!), procuring lower temperature conditions and threatening i wouldn't hesitate to use my very last s04 (doubt there is another one in the whole country ) Brix dropped by 0,5 so it went from 8,0 to 7,5 in a day
Do you think that using yeast nutrient tablets would help at this point in any other similar situation? (just asking, don't have any.....yet).

malt has plenty of nutrients and nitrogen in it.

if anything, you need to aerate teh wort better before pitching, AND pitch an optimal quantity of yeast.

Several people have had issues with Munton's dry yeast lately. I think they are only 5-6gram packets...while other brands like Fermentis and Danstar sell 10-12 gram packets, which is a much healthier quantity of yeast for an ale.

Unfortunately ............
Fermentation is still stuck after 9 days and after pitching my very last S04.
What i did though (after seeing that re-pitching had no effect) was that i bottled three samples, two with priming sugar and one without.
After opening them today (too soon i know) i found that those with priming sugar were beginning to carbonate (and quite well i should say).
What this tells me is that the yeast seems to be healthy and well but for some reason it can't convert the sugars in the wort (which has an intolerable sweet taste).
As i understood by reading this discussion
http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10435&sid=b4c61c0d682679ddbb5fba2063b36e96
there seem to be some cases in which wort based on -even high quality- muntons extracts is proven to be unfermentable .
Frankly at this point i can't think of anything else than factory/storage related reasons for this situation. I knew i could mess up the fermentation process because of my fault (temperature,sanitation, etc.) but not that i could get a "faulty" extract. I can only hope that this won't happen with the other 2 Muntons extracts that i have already bought.
On the bright side in a month or so i am switching completely to A/G + O2 aeration + a kegging system so this way i will be able to have full control over the whole process