I'm newer to fermentation under pressure. I've seen this same phenomenon before, and wondered the same question of whether the beer was finished or not. In this case, the beer fermented quicker than expected, and I'm fiddling around with pressure, so not sure if that affects how I'd interpret this or not. I know I can let it ride and no harm will come, but I am very curious to see how quickly I can turn this beer around just for research's sake of using pressurized fermentation to naturally carbonate.
I made a wheat beer with a lot of wheat (59% red wheat malt + 7% flaked wheat), and am fermenting with Imperial A07 Flagship yeast (which is a Chico strain). I started fermentation with no pressure, then after a day, I dialed the spunding up to 5 psi. When I was what I estimated to be 90% to my FG, I cranked up the spunding to 29 psi to let it build pressure and naturally carbonate. Everything went fine overall, I just got to a flatline SG on my Tilt much sooner than I expected.
Of course, if you've used Tilts, you know their actual measurement value has to be taken with a grain of salt, and just focus more on tracking trends, and rate of change of SG. So in hindsight, I dialed it up to 29 psi when it had more than 10% to go to FG. But if anything, that should've slowed down fermentation and prevented it from flatlining as soon. But it reached the point I'm calling "flatline" at just under 3 days from yeast pitch. And I was fermenting most of this at 68F, only adding some heat until I was at around that flatline point. I've now been at this flatline for a little over 2 days, but I continue to see bubbling in the spunding output (currently at about every 8 seconds).
At this point, I'm thinking I'll just sit and wait until it stops bubbling AND has been at the flatline portion of SG for 3 days. But I'm interested in opinions on this. Plot below...
I made a wheat beer with a lot of wheat (59% red wheat malt + 7% flaked wheat), and am fermenting with Imperial A07 Flagship yeast (which is a Chico strain). I started fermentation with no pressure, then after a day, I dialed the spunding up to 5 psi. When I was what I estimated to be 90% to my FG, I cranked up the spunding to 29 psi to let it build pressure and naturally carbonate. Everything went fine overall, I just got to a flatline SG on my Tilt much sooner than I expected.
Of course, if you've used Tilts, you know their actual measurement value has to be taken with a grain of salt, and just focus more on tracking trends, and rate of change of SG. So in hindsight, I dialed it up to 29 psi when it had more than 10% to go to FG. But if anything, that should've slowed down fermentation and prevented it from flatlining as soon. But it reached the point I'm calling "flatline" at just under 3 days from yeast pitch. And I was fermenting most of this at 68F, only adding some heat until I was at around that flatline point. I've now been at this flatline for a little over 2 days, but I continue to see bubbling in the spunding output (currently at about every 8 seconds).
At this point, I'm thinking I'll just sit and wait until it stops bubbling AND has been at the flatline portion of SG for 3 days. But I'm interested in opinions on this. Plot below...