NEIPA Stalled at ~1.025

[ryanj]

Recipe: http://brewgr.com/recipe/55599/spray-tan-neipa-recipe?public=true

Using WYeast 1318. Package date was early July. I made a 2L started on Aug 26th, decanted and saved a few ounces for a future batch, and pitched the rest after brewday on Aug 31. OG was 1.060, and I did my normal routine and oxygenated my wort with pure o2 for about 1 min before pitching my yeast. I'm using a Tilt hydrometer (for the first time), so I have a pretty good idea of how the fermentation has been going.

I added my first round of dry hops yesterday at around 8am (~1.030). I realize now that may have been about 10 point too early for the biotransformation dry hops.

Either way, about an hour later, it hit 1.024 and has hovered there for about the past 28 hours. I realize the Tilt can become skewed by dry hops so I pulled a sample and confirmed 1.024 with my refractometer (after alcohol correction).

I bumped the temp to 70 and swirled the fermenter lightly at about 11am this morning (which you can see pretty clearly on the graph), but I have a good feeling that this is about as low as it's going to go. With my equipment I usually hit terminal gravity on all of my beers in about 48-72 hours. It's very rare that I see any movement in gravity after about day 3-4.

I'm starting to think I may have poured off too much yeast for my future batch and wound up under pitching this batch. I never have a problem hitting the advertized maximum attenuation on any of my beers, and I'm about 10-12% under that right now.

Should I:

1. Wait a little longer and see what happens
2. Go ahead and pitch the yeast I saved

 

[day_trippr]

I wouldn't worry about the bio-hops - I usually add them once I can see turmoil inside the carboys with a healthy krausen on top, and that's usually 24 hours post-pitch but definitely by 48 hours in.

I suppose it's possible you under-pitched, but now there's a hella lot more yeast in your fermentor than you pitched, so your couple of ounces in reserve will barely nudge the needle on the total cell count.

I'd wait it out for now...

Cheers!

 

[ryanj]

UPDATE: I got antsy and tossed the small sample of yeast I had saved for my next batch into a 0.5L starter. It took off after 30 mins (probably the fastest start I've ever seen), let it ferment overnight and this morning with a full head of kraussen and actively fermenting, I pitched it into the fermentor. I also raised the temp to 72 and gave the fermentor a light swirl.

Airlock activity took off.

It's been a few hours and I'm down to 1.017ish now.

It's really hard to say what happened. Maybe I under pitched. Maybe the Tilt just had a crusty hop ring causing problems with it's reading (very common). Maybe the yeast was just being finicky and needed a temp bump to help them finish up. ...or maybe everything was fine the whole time and having a Tilt caused me to obsess over every point.

Bottom line -- it looks like I'm back on track.

 

[jdauria]

I would just watch that it does not get to low now, you don't want a dry NEIPA normally, some sweetness helps balance the juicy hoppiness. I cold crash my 1.060- 1.065 NEIPA's around 1.015-1.016.

 

[ryanj]

Yep — that’s my target FG.