Microphobik
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
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So I'm currently making a chocolate milk stout. Something pretty close to this. Only real difference is that I have a little more grain and I added half a pound of oats and cut a bit of the roasted barley and dropped the lactose by 25%.
I'm also using Windsor dry yeast and I added just a half teaspoon of wine yeast nutrient (about 1/6 what I would use for wine per the instructions).
I did a BIAB and my efficiency was much better than expected and the OG was 1.076 after lactose (1.068 before).
Within 3 hours of pitching the yeast I had such an intense fermentation that the air lock blew. Once corrected it was bubbling away twice per second and it looked like a sand storm in a Hollywood movie in there.
After just 22 hours I noticed that the bubbling had slowed to one bubble every 5 or 6 seconds and I got concerned so I took a sample reading at gravity was at 1.048. Pretty good but still got a lot of sugar in there. We can assume that if we subtract the lactose I still have 1.04.
8 hours later I'm getting just a bubble every 60 seconds or so, everything has settled to the bottom and there is little noticeable activity.
Is this possibly a stuck fermentation or could this be the yeast not being strong enough to handle the alcohol? It's a British style yeast meant to finish not very dry, but this is still obviously far to sweet. If it's the later I'm also wondering how this would effect priming.
Should I rest confident that the remaining sugar will get finished up over the next week or two regardless of visible activity, should I add some more nutrient, or should I throw in a different strain of yeast to help out?
Really not clear what may be happening here.
I'm also using Windsor dry yeast and I added just a half teaspoon of wine yeast nutrient (about 1/6 what I would use for wine per the instructions).
I did a BIAB and my efficiency was much better than expected and the OG was 1.076 after lactose (1.068 before).
Within 3 hours of pitching the yeast I had such an intense fermentation that the air lock blew. Once corrected it was bubbling away twice per second and it looked like a sand storm in a Hollywood movie in there.
After just 22 hours I noticed that the bubbling had slowed to one bubble every 5 or 6 seconds and I got concerned so I took a sample reading at gravity was at 1.048. Pretty good but still got a lot of sugar in there. We can assume that if we subtract the lactose I still have 1.04.
8 hours later I'm getting just a bubble every 60 seconds or so, everything has settled to the bottom and there is little noticeable activity.
Is this possibly a stuck fermentation or could this be the yeast not being strong enough to handle the alcohol? It's a British style yeast meant to finish not very dry, but this is still obviously far to sweet. If it's the later I'm also wondering how this would effect priming.
Should I rest confident that the remaining sugar will get finished up over the next week or two regardless of visible activity, should I add some more nutrient, or should I throw in a different strain of yeast to help out?
Really not clear what may be happening here.