Rayomatic
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- Feb 20, 2018
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Just got back into brewing last January after about 15 years. Brewed up a 1.065 batch and it's been bottled already at FG 1.012, no problems. Used a pack of Fermentis Safbrew Belgian Abbaye Ale Dry Yeast for that. Using LME and a bit of sugar.
For the second batch I brewed at 1.054 OG and threw in some dry Lalvin 1118 yeast because I was eager and that was all I had. I figured I'd get started with it and see what happened.
That was Jan 20. It's been stuck at 1.033 since at least Feb 1.
I've heard that the Lalvin 1118 ferments everything, so I was surprised. I heard elsewhere that it's not so well suited to fermenting wort sugars, so on Feb 8 I was racking a 3rd batch (1.066, used cultured Chimay White yeast that seemed to take off, bubbling like crazy), and poured some of the yeast cake from that into batch 2. It seemed to start bubbling a bit, which I took to be a good sign, and is still showing tiny bubbles rising up, but SG is still at 1.033!
What's even worse, batch 3, started Feb 2, is only down from 1.066 to 1.044 today, more than 2 weeks later. Help!
These beers had 7 and 10 lbs LME respectively, and 1lb and 1.5lbs sucrose to up the OG a little. I figured there'd be plenty of nutrients from the LME, so what went wrong? Fermentation temp has been steady between 64F and 68F (moved from cooler to slightly warmer location).
I tried to aerate both batches as best I could after the boil, though I have no special equipment to do so. I topped up about 13-14 quarts of boiled wort with cold water to get the final volumes of 5 gal, so I figured that would aerate enough, especially for the lower OG batch 2.
It's weird because batch 1, my first after 15 years, turned out exactly as expected, and I did everything pretty much the same, same brewing conditions, etc.
I've done some research on methods to unstick fermentation, but there are many that seem specific to certain problems (too little aeration, not enough yeast/repitching, too many unfermentables, etc). Would like to zero in on the problem before starting something drastic.
For the second batch I brewed at 1.054 OG and threw in some dry Lalvin 1118 yeast because I was eager and that was all I had. I figured I'd get started with it and see what happened.
That was Jan 20. It's been stuck at 1.033 since at least Feb 1.
I've heard that the Lalvin 1118 ferments everything, so I was surprised. I heard elsewhere that it's not so well suited to fermenting wort sugars, so on Feb 8 I was racking a 3rd batch (1.066, used cultured Chimay White yeast that seemed to take off, bubbling like crazy), and poured some of the yeast cake from that into batch 2. It seemed to start bubbling a bit, which I took to be a good sign, and is still showing tiny bubbles rising up, but SG is still at 1.033!
What's even worse, batch 3, started Feb 2, is only down from 1.066 to 1.044 today, more than 2 weeks later. Help!
These beers had 7 and 10 lbs LME respectively, and 1lb and 1.5lbs sucrose to up the OG a little. I figured there'd be plenty of nutrients from the LME, so what went wrong? Fermentation temp has been steady between 64F and 68F (moved from cooler to slightly warmer location).
I tried to aerate both batches as best I could after the boil, though I have no special equipment to do so. I topped up about 13-14 quarts of boiled wort with cold water to get the final volumes of 5 gal, so I figured that would aerate enough, especially for the lower OG batch 2.
It's weird because batch 1, my first after 15 years, turned out exactly as expected, and I did everything pretty much the same, same brewing conditions, etc.
I've done some research on methods to unstick fermentation, but there are many that seem specific to certain problems (too little aeration, not enough yeast/repitching, too many unfermentables, etc). Would like to zero in on the problem before starting something drastic.
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