Finish Wyeast 1968 batch with US-05 yeast cake?

[danio]

Hi All - I've got a Tricerahops clone that I pitched a starter Wyeast 1968 into a while ago. It seems pretty well stuck at 1.030 now (OG was 1.081). I mashed at 152F. No corn sugar, all grain for fermentables. Maybe a mistake in hindsight.

I roused the primary frequiently and kept the temps at 68 in my freezer. After I realized it was stuck I tried racking my primary Tricerahops to a secondary with lots of the yeast cake. That dropped it a tiny bit (down from 1.035 to current 1.030) but not enough for my taste. I like beers a bit drier.

Anyway I've got a yeast cake of US-05 from a similar styled IPA that will be available soon. Would it be reasonable to rack my Tricerahops onto that cake? I normally love US-05, just unsure of how reasonable this is as a solution.

Anyway - sorry if this has been gone over before, I did lots of searching and couldn't find anything directly relevant to 1968 + US-05 cakes.

Thanks!

Dan

 

[eastoak]

once the food is gone very few regular yeasts will be able to get the gravity to drop much more.

 

[smp1]

In my experience, when the 1968 is done, it is done, and that's usually no more than 4 days. At 1.030, you have Apparent Attenuation of 63%. Wyeast gives a range of attenuation of 67-71% for this yeast, so you are not horribly far away from the lower end. You may have had a minor fermentability issue (crush,mash pH, temperature, etc.), that kept the 1968 from reaching it's full attenuation.

1968 is a wonderful yeast, and it's strong point is superb flocculation, yielding nice bright beers. Unfortunately it is not a great yeast for making big beers that will finish in the teens.
If you don't plan to drink the beer at 1.030, then you really have nothing to lose by pitching it onto the US-05 yeast cake, but i wouldn't expect miracles.

Yeast selection is critical for higher gravity IPA's.

 

[dinnerstick]

If you don't plan to drink the beer at 1.030, then you really have nothing to lose by pitching it onto the US-05 yeast cake, but i wouldn't expect miracles.

agreed! i've used s05 a few times to try to 'finish up' a beer with high/stalled FG; make a starter, get it going for 12 hours, dump that in, it has knocked a few points of the gravity but the beers have never come out quite right. but i've never had such a problem with 1968. i'd be more concerned with figuring out why you didn't get better attenuation with this yeast, it should go lower than that (assuming you didn't use 25% crystal) did you pitch big and oxygenate well?

 

[chuckstout]

I dont now about the flavor profile, but im pretty sure you need to pitch the new yeast (us-05) at high krausen (hope i spelled that right) for so the yeast are active in a alcohlic enviroment. Kinda like pre-funkin before a night on the town

 

[danio]

Mash was 152F, crush was the same as always and pH similar to what I usually get. 1968 was the only variable. I pitched a starter that had krausen and was about 10-12hrs old. Probably not old enough, I know, but my beer was exploding through the blow off tube within 12 hours of pitching. It went for daaaaaaaaaaaays and I thought I was golden, so I was really surprised by the high FG. But still, starter probably wasn't old enough\big enough.

Just tested it this morning and gravity is the same. It's super sweet and has that 'sparkling' taste you get with too much sugar. If I'm gonna save this sucker I better do something.

 

[smp1]

Good discussion on attenuation here:

http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Understanding_Attenuation

 

[danio]

Just to follow up on this thread after a couple of weeks.

I did end up pitching my 1.030 stuck tricerahops onto my third generation US-05 yeast cake. I got 1/4" of Krausen within a few hours and 1" within a day. It sat like that looking slimy for about a week and now (about 12 days later) it's quite clean and tastes much better. Gravity is 1.019 as of a few days ago. I just transferred it to the secondary with lots of dry hops but didn't check the gravity. Hoping it drops even a tad lower but it's lots its awful sweetness!

So long story short, US-05 to the rescue again!

 

[JonM]

Sub'd. This is exactly what I'm planning. I put 3.5 gals of a 1.100+ barleywine on the 1968 cake from a 5 gal batch of 1.045 bitter. the 1968 still crapped out so I'm going to put it on a cake from a to-be-brewed Cream of Three Crops with 05. Your results are really encouraging, so thanks!