Been AG for a little over two years, using a 10g keg-based system. With the exeption of one of about nine brew sessions to date, my fermentations have always been torturously slow, and generally finish a little higher than I'd like (~ 0.005 too high).
After brewing my first parti-gyle batch (big is a barley wine w/OG of 1.113), and pitching the big with a starter stepped up several times to ~ 3/4 gallon (crashed starter and pitched only slurry), I anxiously watched for signs of robust fermenation. Active ferm started in less than 10 hours @ 70F, within two days kreusen was in the blowoff tube, and all seemed well. I expected pretty vigorous ferm for a good week or two, but at day 5 had slowed (subjective measure of ~ a big bubble every two seconds out of blowoff), and started my mind spinning on if and when this beast would finish. At this point I had to take a flight overseas, which gave me alot of time to think about my brewing and fermentation process (and enjoy a few pints in DEN and IAD), and why my ferms have typically been so slow.
I lean towards big beers, thus frequently have a grain bill of 37 - 38# in my 15gallon mash tun. After one batch with somewhat low efficiency (suspected doughball), I started being uber "careful" with mash-in... now I'm wondering if this is the cause of my slow/incomplete fermenations. It took me 20 minutes to complete mash-in on this parti-gyle - though I prolly spent the last 5-8 minutes carefully adding the last ~5# of grain, to ensure it was thoroughly wetted and not overflowing my mash tun.
My theory: my slow and incomplete fermentations are due to the majority of grain seeing higher than target/final mash temp for some 10-15 minutes.
My questions:
1) Validity of the theory?
2) How long are typical mash-in times for your big brews that push mash tun capacity?
3) Ideas on how to effectively mash-in huge grain bills more quickly without doughballs?
4) How can I help this barley wine finish if (as I suspect it will) hangs at too high a gravity after 3 or 4 weeks fermenation?
5) If there is not good way to get it to finish, I'm thinking of repeating this brew at lower mash temp, and blending repeat big brew with the original. If I do so, would it be better to blend the original big (at whatever stage of fermenation it's at by then) with the wort from the repeat big and pitch more yeast into the blend, or to ferment out the repeat big separately and then blend? My thought for blending original with repeat wort and repitching is that perhaps the active fermentation would help those yeasties chew on the more complex sugars of the original batch as they work on the easier sugars from the repeat batch... but I'm over my head here on yeast metabolism.
Thanks!
After brewing my first parti-gyle batch (big is a barley wine w/OG of 1.113), and pitching the big with a starter stepped up several times to ~ 3/4 gallon (crashed starter and pitched only slurry), I anxiously watched for signs of robust fermenation. Active ferm started in less than 10 hours @ 70F, within two days kreusen was in the blowoff tube, and all seemed well. I expected pretty vigorous ferm for a good week or two, but at day 5 had slowed (subjective measure of ~ a big bubble every two seconds out of blowoff), and started my mind spinning on if and when this beast would finish. At this point I had to take a flight overseas, which gave me alot of time to think about my brewing and fermentation process (and enjoy a few pints in DEN and IAD), and why my ferms have typically been so slow.
I lean towards big beers, thus frequently have a grain bill of 37 - 38# in my 15gallon mash tun. After one batch with somewhat low efficiency (suspected doughball), I started being uber "careful" with mash-in... now I'm wondering if this is the cause of my slow/incomplete fermenations. It took me 20 minutes to complete mash-in on this parti-gyle - though I prolly spent the last 5-8 minutes carefully adding the last ~5# of grain, to ensure it was thoroughly wetted and not overflowing my mash tun.
My theory: my slow and incomplete fermentations are due to the majority of grain seeing higher than target/final mash temp for some 10-15 minutes.
My questions:
1) Validity of the theory?
2) How long are typical mash-in times for your big brews that push mash tun capacity?
3) Ideas on how to effectively mash-in huge grain bills more quickly without doughballs?
4) How can I help this barley wine finish if (as I suspect it will) hangs at too high a gravity after 3 or 4 weeks fermenation?
5) If there is not good way to get it to finish, I'm thinking of repeating this brew at lower mash temp, and blending repeat big brew with the original. If I do so, would it be better to blend the original big (at whatever stage of fermenation it's at by then) with the wort from the repeat big and pitch more yeast into the blend, or to ferment out the repeat big separately and then blend? My thought for blending original with repeat wort and repitching is that perhaps the active fermentation would help those yeasties chew on the more complex sugars of the original batch as they work on the easier sugars from the repeat batch... but I'm over my head here on yeast metabolism.
Thanks!
