Beer starter

I have been working on a west coast ipa and used a wet american pale ale yeast. I did not know i was supposed to make a starter for the yeast, i juat finished the two weeks in primary but it did not ferment very active. Should i repitch yeast

Its most likely a bit late.

what was your expected FG and how close did you get to it?

i just read an article about using a starter or not using one and having the same fg even on a high gravity beer. Although the no starter batch took a few days before it started to show obvious signs of fermentation vs the starter only took 4 hours. The starter batch had a much more vigorous ferm adn needed a blow off tube as the non starter batch did not. So using a starter will give you a much cleaner beer and not have as much risk of off flavors or other things happening by a slow start but the end gravity result should be about the same.

Take a specific gravity reading, but leave the beer in the primary. What the specific gravity is will determine the next step. You may be ready to bottle when the beer clears in the primary.

Ok guys i called my local brew shop and we figured out that i may have also added too much water as my starting gravity was 1.025. I added about 50% water up to 5 gallons. My gravity is now 1.010 after two weeks. He told me to make a starter with some dme i had lying around ad some champagne yeast that i have as well. I added yeast nutrient at 5. Tbsn per gallon. Let it start to bubble and added it to the larger batch. We will see how that goes. I boiled the dme for 15 min and cooled to 75 before adding anything

Mattf15004 said:

Ok guys i called my local brew shop and we figured out that i may have also added too much water as my starting gravity was 1.025. I added about 50% water up to 5 gallons. My gravity is now 1.010 after two weeks. He told me to make a starter with some dme i had lying around ad some champagne yeast that i have as well. I added yeast nutrient at 5. Tbsn per gallon. Let it start to bubble and added it to the larger batch. We will see how that goes. I boiled the dme for 15 min and cooled to 75 before adding anything

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What was the recipe? If you topped off and then measured it's likely a measurement error as it's difficult to get the plain water mixed in with the concentrated wort. If it's an extract batch we can calculate your OG which will be more reliable. So I suspect you had the expected recipe gravity, and it's now done at 1.010, in which case adding more yeast isn't going to do anything.

I attached the recipe i used

1.010 could be all you're getting if its extract.
1.025 start will be a baby beer under 2% and my guess, not worth drinking. Lack of a starter is the least of your worries.
Champagne yeast is a bad idea and poor advice.

ok, I'm lost now, did you make 5 gallons or not? what was your mashing process?

So you did a partial boil all grain batch? We probably don't know the true OG then, you may have had some mixing error but also likely a much lower OG then you were aiming for if you topped off a whole 50%. It is possible to do a partial boil with all grain, I sometimes do when I want 5 gals on my 3 gal system, but you need to account for efficiency loss from doing such a small sparge. I usually max out around the low 1.050's. This looks like it's supposed to be about 1.060-1.065 finished, if you tried to do it as 2.5 gal partial boil that means the post boil wort would need to be 1.120 or thereabouts. Were you just way off on volumes or did you plan to do it that way?

Og at 1.025 for ~11lbs of grain. Something is way off.

Measurement error from a sample that was far too hot is likely.

Either measurement error or almost uncrushed grain or mash temps way to high or way too low. It has to be something extreme to account for that low an OG.

FG of 1.010 after 2 weeks. It's done. Adding champagne yeast was not a good idea. It may well chew through some otherwise not fermentable complex xcugars bringing your beer down to 1.000 ish.

Unfortunately now that it's added, not a whole lot you can do.

You can't bottle it now as the risk of bombs is real and present.

Gotta let it sit for another coupe of weeks unless there is no renewed fermentation after 3 days. Then bottle. Store those bottles somewhere safe though.

I gotta say. That is pretty bad advice and assessment of things buy your guy at the LHBS I reckon.

Better advice would have been to let it finish, dry hop in primary and bottle 7 days later.

Just my 2c. Hopefully things will pan out nicely for your beer.

I thought i would have a larger batch of wort since i boiled 4 gallons and had a 1 gallon sparge. Today i did make a starter like my brew shop mentioned with the champagne yeast, nutrient, and 1 cup dme. I guess it couldnt hurt. I am getting splotches of bubbles now and some gas pushing throught the blowoff tubes. I feel like its not going to have any vigorous action though.

I had quite an issue getting my wort to boil. The temperature said it was over 220 but i couldnt get a vigorous rolling boil, this could be my problem. I was trying to boil a five gallon mash on a stovetop.

It was reading 220 and the water wasn't even boiling? Assuming you were not boiling under pressure you need a new thermometer (or to calibrate the current one if it allows). If you were using it for monitoring mash temps that's a problem. Speaking of that, you weren't really attempting to boil the actual mash, right? You probably should just walk through your whole process if you want help for next time. If you don't want to get a better heat source you may try going with smaller 2.5-3 gal batches (how big is your pot BTW?). For 5 gals of beer finished you should be boiling about 6-7 gals. Starting with a 4 gal mash, less 1.4 gal to grain absorption, that means you should have done about a 4 gal sparge.

I boiled about 4 gallons and one gallon sparge. Then added water to 5 gal. This was my first attempt at an all grain. I did not boil the grains just the wort after removing grains

1.025 is for sure measurement error. then almost certainly due to inadequate mixing of the top-up (not normally done with all-grain brewing) Probably need to do a little homework into all-grain brewing. Your way-off in terms if your methods. No shame in that, that's what this whole forum is about. Learning and sharing.

Unfortunately your champagne yeast will do harm most likely. There is a very good reason why it's not used for making beer.

Never mind. On to the next batch.

you need to find a new LHBS. Read howtobrew and start over from scratch

Personally, from the info that I can gather from your posts, (not very much) you quite possibly have created dumpenbrau. A classic recipe for first timers

Why were you boiling your mash?

As others have said.

Don't boil the mash. (there is a process called deccotion when that happens but that is not what you're doing) Don't boil the mash.

If you did boil the mash.

Dump it

Find better sources of info (HBT is the best)

Don't listen to the LHBS guy. Bad advice.

Unfortunately you have made Dumpenbrau. (that is a great term I've just learned)

Better luck next time. Lots of folks here ready to offer you their advice should you need it.

Dudes the OP said he/she didn't boil the mash, I agree it wasn't clear from the first couple posts which is why I asked. The volume miscalculation certainly affected things, but the bigger problem may be that thermometer as it sounds like it might be 10 degrees or more off. That certainly could explain almost no conversion if you were using it for the mash. You can always taste it and see but I agree this may be a dumper. If you get a reliable thermometer there's plenty of help here for the rest of the process as mentioned.

My apologies OP. I'm rereading and see you clearly state you didn't boil the mash.

On boiling temperature, it is ~212 and is dictated by altitude, atmospheric pressure and to a tiny extent by relative humidity.

Unless your brewing in the Himalaya or in an iron lung don't worry about measuring boiling temp.

Once boiling is reached the temperature remains unchanged regardless of how much heat you supply. Drop a couple of hot rods of plutonium in and the water will still remain at boiling temperature. The more energy you supply the more steam is produced.

This is called the latent heat of evaporation. Boiling at 220 means your thermometer is next to useless or needs to be calibrated. Here a useful link in how to do that.

This just sounds like a top-up issue. Misreading the OG due to inadequate mixing. The beer may well have been fine till the added champagne yeast. Time will tell.

Again, apologies for steering you off with my nonsense earlier.

Thanks @chickypad for the correction.

I did not plan it, i steeped 4 gallons with grains and sparged with 1 gallon. I then boiled all 5 gallons for 1 hour and 10 min because i had troubles getting the whole pot up to temp since it was stove top. It did boil but not as vigorous as it should. I believe i had two problems. I should have used a turkey fryer o the sonething to more efficiently boil the wort, i also should have stared with a larger pot of water to account for evap

still lacking the necessary info....
what temp did you "steep"? Steeping by the way is not mashing, your grain bill needed to be mashed. How long did you mash for?

your only bet to have even a remote possibility to salvage this beer is to sit down and type out exactly what you did with this brew. 3 pages now and we still don't know for sure what you have done with the grains. Forget what your LHBS told you, we've already discovered what his advice is worth.
the lack of rolling boil is not your issue, not even close.

I steeped at 155 for about 70 min then raised the temp to 175. I then strained the grains and brought to a boil but had a difficult time boiling the wort so this took a long time. I then added hops at my checkpoints and boiled for about 75 min because the slow boil reaching. I then dropped the pot into ice and brought to 75 degrees. After i put into fermenter and added a wet american ale yeast but did not know i needed a starter. Over the next three days fermentation was evident but not as vigourous as i would have hoped. Now after two weeks i tasted it and it still tastes very similar to when i first put it in the fermenter and has not changed much. It has cleared and slowed fermenting. I did add the starter with a pavket of champagne yeast and there is little action. I got about 1/4 inch of bubbles but it will be over soon.

Ok then. Now we know you have mashed not steeped. From your description there is no reason for a 1.025 OG other than an error measuring.
1.010 is not hard to believe for a 155 mash temp. Don't worry about the lack of starter, thousands of brewers pitch a single vial for a 5 gallon batch.

your hydrometer is the only thing that can help you now. If there is no movement in gravity over 3 days, the beer is done. With any luck the champagne yeast had nothing to ferment and you just might have a decent beer.

Bellybuster said:

Ok then. Now we know you have mashed not steeped. From your description there is no reason for a 1.025 OG other than an error measuring.

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I would think there could be issues with conversion if the thermometer was 10+ degrees off. OP said it was reading over 220 and the water wasn't really boiling.

Now the water was boiling but not a vigorous boil that would make even a little bit of bubbles more just a light roll. Also the thermometer is a long stick thermometer that was reading temp from the bottom if that makes a difference.
I added pics from when i was making it. The two hydrometer redings are from before adding water and after adding water

That helps. The one before topping off looks like 1.090, maybe 1.092. So if you had 2.5 gals of that and topped off with 2.5 gals you were probably in the 1.045 range. Might taste overbittered. Guess you made a session IPA.

Anything else i can do. It seems like ill just resume as normal. Wait until the added starter stops fermenting for three days then secondary fermenter, then bottle and age. Shall i add sugar when bottling for carbonation/conditioning

Also if it was about 1.045 why was it reading 1.022 ish. Im confused

It's hard to get plain top off water to mix well with the dense wort, so it's very common to get an artificially low reading. You're better off calculating using the post boil sample. Wait until the reading is definitely stable then you can go ahead and bottle.

the thermo resting on the bottom of the pot will be useless.
did you chill the samples?? If the wort is hot it will throw the reading way off. Your reading is bang on if wort was at your mash temps.
Starting to look better as more info comes out. Would have saved 4 pages had we had it in the beginning

why a bag in one pic of th mash and no bag in the next?

Brew shop guy sold me a bag which burned at the bottom of the pot and broke very quickly, i checked the readings immediately after the wort was chilled to 75 dgrees.

Any other advice, i plan to put into secondary fermrnter with dry hop in a less than a week, which will be third week of fermentation, then with 10 days of a 2 week secondary initiating a cold crash by filling my cooler surrounding glass carboys with ice

Pass on the secondary, pass on the labor intensive cold-crash.

Once the beer is finished fermenting the krausen will fall, the beer will clear and you can add the dry hops to the fermentor. Just pop them in there for however many days you want. 3-7 days are oft advised timeframes.

Then bottle the beer taking care to keep the syphon beneath the hops and above the trub. Clear beer to bottling bucket will result. You can also place a sanitized screen over the syphone end in the bucket to minimize hop particulate getting through. Not to fine a screen as it will block. A hop sock will work.

Alternatively put the dry-hops in a hop sock and then into the beer when dry-hopping. (sanitize the hopsock first wit boiling for 1 minute or a star san bath)

Also avoid burning the bag by keeping it off the bottom of the pot with a small cooling rack or inverted collander.

Bad luck there. Good news is 5 gallon paint strainer bags ar $2 at HD/Lowes. Lots of folks use them for mashing in a bag. BIAB

Great, thanks so much for all the feedback.

So I did move the wort into a secondary fermenter because I've had issues in the past of sediments getting into the final product and in doing so I tested the gravity again and it was just slightly lower. I also tasted the wort again and this time I could taste a significant difference, it now taste like its getting where needs to be, I'm not sure what's up with a specific gravity discrepancy but my issue with fermentation I believe came from trying to keep the temperature around 67 degrees. I had no way of doing this except adding ice and I think the temperature just got to low