puzzled

[akimbo78]

so i made a Bells Two Hearted clone. og 1.058. used White labs California Ale V, with a 1L starter on a stir plate. its been fermenting for 2-1/2 weeks at 64* ambient. i never saw the fermometer go over 70. got a reading of 1.011 which is below the expected FG of 1.017 per beersmith. i use a refractometer and the onebrew.net calculator for all conversions. there was also still a lot of yeast rafts. i dry hopped anyway and plan to keg on sunday, or i could wait until wednesday. how did the gravity drop so low? isn't that beyond the strains capability? its also a highly flocculant strain, why am i still seeing so many rafts?

 

[Scooby_Brew]

+-.006 FG isn't at all a big difference, it only shows you that brewing is more art then science. There could be many reasons for it such us mash temps, yeast viability, water chemistry, mash pH, malt/extract manufacturer etc, etc. Even "big" breweries don't always end up with exactly same results with each batch.
To take care of unflocculated yeast try crash cooling + gelatin.

 

[Yooper]

That's about 81% attenuation, if my math is right, and easily obtainable by that strain. According to the White Labs site, it's more likely to get 75%, but I've had 80% before with that strain.

 

[kh54s10]

You also may be a few points off using a refractometer. I find that the calculators are not completely accurate.

Have you calibrated your refractometer recently? I checked my refractometer yesterday after calibrating last week. It read .004 with distilled water. Needless to say I re-calibrated it.

 

[NordeastBrewer77]

i just got ~80% AA from 1272 (same strain) in my rye p.a., which is a little better than the 75-77% i usually get using that strain, but not a worry. i wouldn't sweat it. as far as that yeast being highly flocculant, that's not my experience. it'll stay up in suspension for weeks after FG is reached in most of the beers i use it in.

 

[Scooby_Brew]

BTW, just so happened I also brewed my Dues of Hearts IPA (2-Hearted), 10 gal, 5 gal with WLP051, 5 gal with Notty. The one with WLP051 was crystal clear going to the keg, but now is cloudy again in the kegerator (it was primed in the keg). It really doesn't bother me much, but it tells me that "high flocculation" doesn't work all the time. Unfortunately I did not measure the FG.
The fermenter with Notty was much more cloudy and is still crash cooling in the garage

 

[akimbo78]

i just checked the white labs site. they list it as medium flocculation, while beersmith has it as high...

 

[william_shakes_beer]

While reading some of the books recommended here (designing great beers) I have learned that many of the "different" strain that are available today originated with the same strain. Apparently if you take a single strain of yeast, expose one sample to multiple generations of a porter, and the other to successive generations of blond ale, you often come up with two distinctly different strains. Perhaps these are really different versions of the "named" strain?

 

[funkswing]

The high flocculation of that yeast is most noticeable in the glass, i.e. clear beer without filtration (esp. compared to that yeast's brother 001/1056).

Other great things about the yeast is its a fast fermenter.

But the yeast can't handle low temps as well as 1056 and its not quite as neutral as 1056 (a bit more fruity and kinda a sweet bread smell in young beers)