How long to ferment a RIS?

[Sadu]

Hi, I put down a 1.087 RIS yesterday.

What's the accepted wisdom on how long to ferment these things? Haven't done any of this high gravity stuff before.

I'm not in a hurry, happy to wait until it's 'done', but also don't want it sitting around in the fermenter taking up space longer than it needs to. It's more convenient for me to age this in the bottle than the fermenter.

I pitched a lot of yeast and fermentation is going fast and hard, just how I like it. Do I wait a few days/whatever for the beer to hit FG, give it another 1-2 weeks in primary for good measure, then bottle?

 

[jddevinn]

Until it's done fermenting! Then I keg condition. The RIS I normally do takes about 10 days to settle out, then the time to crash, carb up..... then it tastes green for a couple weeks.

 

[DurtyChemist]

Ferment until final gravity is reached. It could take 2 weeks or it could take 4. Honestly I'd personally wait 4 until I measured the final gravity then I'd wait another week to see if it went any lower. After that I'd keg it, carbonate it then hide it. I actually need to brew one that's a 1.137 OG for a barrel project being aged a year before any is pulled.

 

[Sadu]

Cool, thanks for the replies.

Sounds like a standard fermentation then, I thought I'd just check if there was anything special needed but all good.

Never done one of these before, the gravity samples are blowing my mind, and that chocolate smell mmmmm. Down to 1.035 already and getting a hint of hot alcohol now, I don't think the temps have gone over 20c / 70f at any point so hopefully this clears up during the bottle aging.

 

[jddevinn]

The only things I do different with higher gravity beers is do a secondary O2 injection after 12-24 hours, and depending on the yeast start ramping fermentation temp up a bit after a couple days.

 

[secondbase]

My RIS sees a 5-week primary and then secondary for two months of bulk aging before packaging. The longer you can wait, the more rewarding it'll be. It's really amazing after a year, two years, three if cellared properly.

 

[jddevinn]

If you keg, kegs work much better as conditioning vessels then secondary fermenters!

 

[adiochiro3]

Barrels/casks work even better with these beers.

 

[WrQth]

I have an RIS that is conditioning in a firkin for the next 6 months, 30 days in primary OG 1.102 -> FG 1.024.

 

[Sadu]

Dang, this just finished at 1.027 which is a bit higher than I wanted. This is 67% apparent attenuation which is at the low end but the last brew I did with this yeast finished at 69% AA.

So since OG was low and FG was high, at 8% ABV, I guess this is going to be a session RIS? lol.