Can hard water contribute to long ferment times?

[N9BOW]

On Cinco de Mayo I did a double brew day. 10 gallons of cream ale and 10 gallons of my favorite pale ale. The cream ale is still fermenting.. temps are and have been at 67 degrees the whole time. I have noticed this trend on all my batches to date roughly 40 gallons worth. I have been brewing for about 8 months so I have not tried any other yeast strains beside Safale US-05 maybe this is a characteristic of that too..

I was looking to gain some knowledge from you guys that know the science side behind brewing and was looking for any input so I could soak it in.. All the beers so far have turned out great, so I dont have any concerns about these two batches...was just curious why fermentation seems to take so long. we are on well water, it is hard but very tasty. We dont use a softner, it straight from the well. I have noticed my bitterness lingered a bit longer on the back of my tounge from my previous batches of pale ale. So this time I dry hopped this go round to try and balance that out. Not sure if the minerals in the water contribute to lingering bitterness or just need to tweak the hop additions and timing.

this is a pic of one of the carboys with the cream ale. been fermenting (albeit very slowly) 26 days

This is the APA same amount of time same yeast still showing some activity but mostly done.

temp

batches together..just look at em..all happy

 

[Hex23]

The cream ale is still fermenting.. temps are and have been at 67 degrees the whole time.

How are you determining this? Is it based solely on visual appearance, i.e. krausen and air-lock bubbling? If so, that's not the best evidence of fermentation. You need to be taking gravity readings to really know that. There are many reason that a krausen might hang on for a while or CO2 off-gassing continue beyond fermentation. Slightly different story, but my last lager still had a krausen at three weeks and i had to drop temps to get the yeast to drop out.

As you allude to, there are certain minerals that can either accentuate the maltiness or hops bitterness. But nothing that I know of in the hardness that would cause fermentation to last longer. Calcium is necessary for yeast to be able to flocculate, but I don't think having higher levels would make the yeast flocculate slower/faster.

 

[N9BOW]

How are you determining this? Is it based solely on visual appearance, i.e. krausen and air-lock bubbling?

yeah I was just going by the amount of krausen.
I have left it alone in the dark and have checked on it once a week since i pitched the yeast. Every time I would check, it would be more or less still there. I have not wanted to take a sample as I was going to let both batches site for a month anyway. But now that a month is almost here I was just starting to wonder.

I wanted to keg both this weekend but when I saw the cream ale the way it was and its still not as clear as i'd like, I figured it was still doing its thing. it's my first time with anything other then a pale ale so this krausen thing sticking around is a new experience.

Should I try to get these into the fridge in the garage and cold crash them to get the yeast to fall out before taking a sample. Wasnt sure I wanted to take a sample though all the krausen.

 

[Hex23]

Should I try to get these into the fridge in the garage and cold crash them to get the yeast to fall out before taking a sample. Wasnt sure I wanted to take a sample though all the krausen.

If you want to be sure that fermentation is over, you should just take a sample through the krausen. Otherwise cold crashing, especially if done fast, will make the yeast go dormant and they may not be easy to wake back up if you need to ferment more. Ultimately it looks like you may need to cold crash to get they yeast to settle.

If by now you haven't reached you FG, than I'd say that's not really normal for an ale, but not necessarily bad for your beer. If you want to figure it out, you might try experimenting with different conditions, one at a time, like cutting your water with DI or RO to make it softer and different yeast to see if those are at play. I don't remember where, but I read a thread on here recently where someone was claiming that for their yeast they were normally having to rack through krausen at bottling time.