[question] Wild yeast capture/isolation, 0% attenuation??

[Culinarytracker]

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So I got the refractometer out, cleaned up some pipettes and took a few samples today. All of the samples ranged from 1.018 to 1.021. (I started with 1.020 wort) so I'm a little confused.

They have been incubating at 83F for just under a week, and shaking once or twice per day.

I've put a couple samples under the microscope on the hemocytometer and a quick and dirty cell count is showing between 5-72 million cells per mL.

Are there 0% AA yeast cells out there?

Is it possible these aren't really yeast? (400x)

 

[pursuit0fhoppiness]

You shouldn't be using a refractometer to take gravities of samples that you believe have been fermenting and thus contain alcohol. Alcohol throws refractometer readings way off. If there is alcohol the actual gravities of the samples will be far less. Looks like you were fermenting in test tubes so you wouldn't be able to use a hydrometer, so not really sure what to say, except that either a) their gravities are probably much lower if there is alcohol present or b) no fermentation has happened and the gravities are still around the OG.

 

[Culinarytracker]

Looks like you were fermenting in test tubes so you wouldn't be able to use a hydrometer, so not really sure what to say, except that their gravities are probably much lower.

I guess I had things backwards. I am well aware that hydrometers need calculated to determin fg, but I thought it would still move some kind of relative amount. I figured the refractometer would read lower than the hydrometer.

I guess I need to brush up on that, and I guess I'll stick a sample into a larger batch of 1.040 wort and see what happens when I can measure it.