Funkenjaeger
Well-Known Member
Having read accounts of people with fermentations that just didn't want to finish, and usually seeing it attributed to mistakes on the brewer's part (especially the new brewers) I wondered if it'd happen to me, and it seems like it has.
I brewed the American Pale Ale II kit from morebeer.com. I don't have the recipe handy at the moment but the kit had 8lb of LME, 1.5lb crystal 15L, and 8oz honey malt. My OG was about 1.060 (which verified fine when I put the recipe into beersmith), and I pitched a packet of S-05 dry yeast. I left it for about 2 weeks in my fermentation cabinet at around 65-68F, and at that point there was little to no airlock activity and the SG was remaining constant at 1.020 for a few days. The kit didn't specify a target FG, but beersmith predicted 1.015, so it seems a bit high still. However, beersmith did place a red exclamation point next to the honey malt in the recipe, which I've not seen before, and I wonder if it wasn't accounting for it properly, giving an inaccurate target FG. Though, it doesn't seem to me that a mere 8oz of honey malt would make that significant a difference in any case.
As for the brewing process, everything went normally, as good as any of my other batches have gone, no big glaring mistakes or anything. I oxygenated, pitched at around 70 something, and fermentation started up within 12 hours, no obvious problems. There were (and still are) no signs of infection - it smells fine, looks fine, and tastes fine, so far.
I knew the trub in this batch was going to be pretty bad, as it used 5oz of pellet hops in total and of course quite a bit got through my straining bag, so I racked it to secondary to get it off that junk. I pitched a packet of S-04 that I had in the fridge onto it, hoping to drop the SG some more, but there were very few bubbles in the airlock (few enough that I wouldn't rule out the possibility that it's just CO2 coming out of solution) and after a week in secondary the SG hasn't dropped a single point.
At this point, I don't know what I can really do for it. In its defense, it really does taste pretty good at this point - there's more sweetness than there probably should be, but then again it had quite a bit of hops in it so it's not completely unbalanced. My non-hophead roommates will probably appreciate the increased sweetness anyway. Luckily, I don't have to worry about bottle bombs because I use kegs, so I'm strongly considering just chucking it in a keg as is.
With that said, is there anything I can reasonably do at this point? (short of making a gigantic starter or something to beat it into submission)
Or, does it actually seem like my FG is significantly higher than it should be? (maybe beersmith's predictions weren't 100% accurate?)
And, in retrospect, what SHOULD I have done? I am thinking I should have spent a few days repeatedly swirling/rousing the yeast in the primary to see if I could get a bit more fermentation out of it.
In all, I'm not terribly disappointed or worried (ie - I'm R-ing, NW-ing, and HAHB
), because I think it's going to be very drinkable no matter what, but it'd be nice to know what happened to improve my practices for the future.
I brewed the American Pale Ale II kit from morebeer.com. I don't have the recipe handy at the moment but the kit had 8lb of LME, 1.5lb crystal 15L, and 8oz honey malt. My OG was about 1.060 (which verified fine when I put the recipe into beersmith), and I pitched a packet of S-05 dry yeast. I left it for about 2 weeks in my fermentation cabinet at around 65-68F, and at that point there was little to no airlock activity and the SG was remaining constant at 1.020 for a few days. The kit didn't specify a target FG, but beersmith predicted 1.015, so it seems a bit high still. However, beersmith did place a red exclamation point next to the honey malt in the recipe, which I've not seen before, and I wonder if it wasn't accounting for it properly, giving an inaccurate target FG. Though, it doesn't seem to me that a mere 8oz of honey malt would make that significant a difference in any case.
As for the brewing process, everything went normally, as good as any of my other batches have gone, no big glaring mistakes or anything. I oxygenated, pitched at around 70 something, and fermentation started up within 12 hours, no obvious problems. There were (and still are) no signs of infection - it smells fine, looks fine, and tastes fine, so far.
I knew the trub in this batch was going to be pretty bad, as it used 5oz of pellet hops in total and of course quite a bit got through my straining bag, so I racked it to secondary to get it off that junk. I pitched a packet of S-04 that I had in the fridge onto it, hoping to drop the SG some more, but there were very few bubbles in the airlock (few enough that I wouldn't rule out the possibility that it's just CO2 coming out of solution) and after a week in secondary the SG hasn't dropped a single point.
At this point, I don't know what I can really do for it. In its defense, it really does taste pretty good at this point - there's more sweetness than there probably should be, but then again it had quite a bit of hops in it so it's not completely unbalanced. My non-hophead roommates will probably appreciate the increased sweetness anyway. Luckily, I don't have to worry about bottle bombs because I use kegs, so I'm strongly considering just chucking it in a keg as is.
With that said, is there anything I can reasonably do at this point? (short of making a gigantic starter or something to beat it into submission)
Or, does it actually seem like my FG is significantly higher than it should be? (maybe beersmith's predictions weren't 100% accurate?)
And, in retrospect, what SHOULD I have done? I am thinking I should have spent a few days repeatedly swirling/rousing the yeast in the primary to see if I could get a bit more fermentation out of it.
In all, I'm not terribly disappointed or worried (ie - I'm R-ing, NW-ing, and HAHB
), because I think it's going to be very drinkable no matter what, but it'd be nice to know what happened to improve my practices for the future.
)...but if it tastes fine...success!
