So, a friend and I decided to brew "Hopfather" as seen in Extreme Brewing. We followed the directions word for word, changing only the timing of our DME addition at the advice of fellow HBT users. I'm fairly confident that our timing and technique was spot on according to the directions, but there are a few issues with fermentation.
Our original gravity reading was out... BIG TIME. I don't have the book in front of me right now so I can't give the exact difference, but we ended up with 1.090 while the book put it somewhere in the high 1.060's. The spread was at least .020 points.
Furthermore, we under pitched. At the advice of the book we used a single liquid yeast pack from White Labs. I know now that I probably needed at least twice this much. Furthermore, a high-gravity yeast may have been preferable.
After three weeks of fermentation our gravity was sitting at 1.038. We allowed the beer to sit for three more days, took another reading, and got 1.032. However, at this point the beer had been sitting for two weeks on a substantial amount of hops so we decided to rack to a secondary.
So, right now the beer has a ton of sediment, yeast, etc. and is sitting in the secondary around 70-71F. My question is, by under pitching have we done any serious damage? Should we just leave it...and if YES (which is my instinct) how long is too long? Should we consider re-pitching?
Thanks a lot for your advice!
Our original gravity reading was out... BIG TIME. I don't have the book in front of me right now so I can't give the exact difference, but we ended up with 1.090 while the book put it somewhere in the high 1.060's. The spread was at least .020 points.
Furthermore, we under pitched. At the advice of the book we used a single liquid yeast pack from White Labs. I know now that I probably needed at least twice this much. Furthermore, a high-gravity yeast may have been preferable.
After three weeks of fermentation our gravity was sitting at 1.038. We allowed the beer to sit for three more days, took another reading, and got 1.032. However, at this point the beer had been sitting for two weeks on a substantial amount of hops so we decided to rack to a secondary.
So, right now the beer has a ton of sediment, yeast, etc. and is sitting in the secondary around 70-71F. My question is, by under pitching have we done any serious damage? Should we just leave it...and if YES (which is my instinct) how long is too long? Should we consider re-pitching?
Thanks a lot for your advice!