Fast fermentation of Winter Warmer...too fast?

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jim12180

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I am brewing a winter warmer right now using a partial extract recipe. My OG was 1.089. It has been two weeks and I racked it to the secondary just now. My hydrometer is reading about 1.021.

The fermentation seemed quite active for about 4-5 days the first week. I originally added one smack pack of Wyeast 1056, and then at the advice of my local homebrew shop I added a pack of Safale US-05 Dry Ale Yeast about 48 hours after pitching the first yeast since I was nervous about too little yeast for a relatively bigger beer (target of 9% ABV). There was a good inch or so of yeast on the bottom of the primary, I had to sacrifice a little under a gallon to avoid sucking all that crud into the secondary.

Is that out of the ordinary to have that much of a drop in specific gravity in only two weeks? I have been told beers like these need months to ferment out properly.

This is my recipe
 
They need months to condition, but unless your fermentation got hot, don't worry. If you had left it in the fermenter for a couple more weeks, the yeast cake would have compacted much more.
 
Not weird at all. I fermented out a barleywine (that's fantastic!) from 1.100 to 1.020 in like 8 days. During that time my Saison went about .004 gravity points! That sucker took forever.

In fact last Sunday I pitched 1056 into a stout at 1.058. It finished 1.011 on Wednesday. Fastest I've ever seen. It's actually too dry, but that's beside the point!
 

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