First Partial Mash, BIAB

[bosster01]

I bottled this last night. So like I said earlier my OG was a tad high 1.064 with goal of 1.057 - and I'd guess this is because I didn't have a food scale so I kind of guessed on the amount of lactose.

My fermentation was extremely quick with not as much krausen as I'm used to. Fermentation was essentially complete within 3 days.

Anyways after 3 weeks in primary it's been bottled with 3/4 c of corn sugar for priming.

My final numbers:
OG: 1.064
FG: 1.026
ABV = 4.99%

Idk what the heck happened, but for some reason it didn't ferment all the way down. I was wondering if this extra could all be from the lactose? Or if I had under attenuation.

Anyways traditional buffalo sweat is right at 5% so maybe this will be perfect?

One other thing about fermentation - I may have had a small infection. I had a lacy very faint white mold looking thing across the top of the fermenter. It wasn't confluent and it was extremely faint/hard to see without looking closely.

The beer tasted great uncarbed and warm though.

 

[RM-MN]

The early stages of fermentation are usually quick with ale yeast. 3 days isn't uncommon but that is just the early stage where the yeast are eating up the sugars but in that phase the yeast also creates other compounds and given a bit more time it will break these down too but while doing so they give off no CO2 so there is no indication that anything is going on.

You could have bottled earlier if the hydrometer showed no changes over a 3 day period but leaving it longer lets more yeast settle out so you don't get as much in the bottle.

You'll often see some bubbles rafting on the surface when the ferment it done. That is normal and not a sigh of infection. Infections will often have larger bubbles and a pellicle forming on the surface.

Get a scale. You'll need one soon anyway. Without knowing how much lactose you put in you can't calculate what your FG should have been. Since lactose is unfermentable by beer yeast, any you add will raise the FG.

 

[bosster01]

I bought a food scale the day after this occurred .

 

[slym2none]

Yes, your FG is going to be high due to the lactose addition.

 

[bosster01]

This beer ended up tasting great after 3 weeks of bottling conditioning. Tastes just like buffalo sweat. Super smooth, easy to drink, very tasty.

No complaints. Carbonated perfectly.

The website won't let me upload a picture since this update... once that gets worked out I will!

Thanks everyone for the help.

Planning on doing this again with vanilla in the future.