Stalled ESB

[SteveHeff]

Good evening. I recently brewed up a batch of an ESB using Wyeast1968 2 weeks ago.

15 lbs pale 2 row
1 lb white wheat
8 oz C90

Boiled for an hour, with a couple doses of hops (1 oz at 60 min and 2 oz at flameout). I cooled the wort in an ice bath and had temps down to 74 degrees within 2 hours. The batch was split between 5.5 gallons at 1.070 and 3.5 gallons at 1.044. I pitched my 1968 yeast starter, which I built the day before. It had a nice foamy layer of krausen, yeast appeared active. 3/4 of my 1.5 liter starter went into my 1.070 and the rest went into the small batch. They have been fermenting away at between 66-68F.

Fast forward to today. I took gravity samples. Both utterly stalled at 1.022 for the big beer and 1.020 for the small beer. This is the first time I have used this yeast. I have always had great attenuation from wyeast strains. This one is bothering me a bit.

Should I wait it out another week or begin to think yeast nutrient and champagne yeast? Since I've never fermented with this before, I was a bit uncertain as far as timing on my primary fermentation. Thank you.

 

[JugDog]

I've used this yeast recently and I noticed that it settles at the bottom of the fermenter in a really dense layer. You may just need to give it a gentle stir to get the yeast back in suspension to speed things up, maybe up the temp a little.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I have always had great attenuation from wyeast strains. This one is bothering me a bit.

Wyeast is nothing to do with it - the Fuller's yeast is a proper British cask yeast demonstrating the link between attenuation and flocculation. For cask beers you want something that floccs like a rock, but the flip side of that is that attenuation isn't great, from memory the official figure is 67-71% for 1968. So a certain sweetness is part of the style. What temperature did you mash at? Those kinds of yeast like a wort that's been mashed low. They also like to be pitched reasonably cool and then allowed to free-rise up to 66-68F, before being cooled a bit for the rest of fermentation.

It may also be worth rousing.

Did you blend the two worts? It's a key part of how Fuller's do a partigyle, as the second runnings are lower quality as well as lower in sugar so they blend the first and second runnings in different proportions to get worts of higher and lower sugar but allowing the weaker beer to be better quality. I've not done a partigyle myself, but I can imagine that failing to blend means that the second runnings have lower attenuation.

 

[SteveHeff]

Wyeast is nothing to do with it - the Fuller's yeast is a proper British cask yeast demonstrating the link between attenuation and flocculation. For cask beers you want something that floccs like a rock, but the flip side of that is that attenuation isn't great, from memory the official figure is 67-71% for 1968. So a certain sweetness is part of the style. What temperature did you mash at? Those kinds of yeast like a wort that's been mashed low. They also like to be pitched reasonably cool and then allowed to free-rise up to 66-68F, before being cooled a bit for the rest of fermentation.

It may also be worth rousing.

Did you blend the two worts? It's a key part of how Fuller's do a partigyle, as the second runnings are lower quality as well as lower in sugar so they blend the first and second runnings in different proportions to get worts of higher and lower sugar but allowing the weaker beer to be better quality. I've not done a partigyle myself, but I can imagine that failing to blend means that the second runnings have lower attenuation.

Thanks for the insightful responses. This is the kind of info I am looking for.

I mashed at 148, which dropped to 145 by the end of my 60 minute mash. I wanted a wort that was highly fermentable...my beer store guy informed me of the possible low attenuation as well.

The wort was/has been at a stable 66-68F for the entirety of the fermentation. I did rouse my buckets a sanitized metal spoon. Careful not to incorporate too much air, but enough to disturb the yeast.

If this doesn't do the trick, I'll move them upstairs to my pantry where the temp is an ambient 72-76F. OR I will add nutrient to encourage the yeast to finish the job. I'm leaning toward the nutrient due to unwanted flavors from a higher fermentation temp.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I did rouse my buckets a sanitized metal spoon. Careful not to incorporate too much air, but enough to disturb the yeast.

If this doesn't do the trick, I'll move them upstairs to my pantry where the temp is an ambient 72-76F. OR I will add nutrient to encourage the yeast to finish the job. I'm leaning toward the nutrient due to unwanted flavors from a higher fermentation temp.

Mash and ferm look fine. It's probably a bit late now, but it's no bad thing to rouse these low-attenuating yeast during the first few days of fermentation, in which case you can worry rather less about oxygenation, in fact a lot of traditional British practice is about getting oxygen into the wort in the early days. I wouldn't sweat too much about the higher temp, although 72 would be better than 76, it's closer to a cleanup rest.

But your big beer must be close to attenutating on spec? So I'm not sure it has a lot more to give - or certainly not so much more that it's worth messing about with it too much. The smaller beer maybe, but then there's that question about the fermentability of second runnings.

 

[SteveHeff]

Big beer is at 1.016 now. I'm happy with that. The small beer is at 1.018. I'm not unhappy about this. I'll let them finish up the last 5 days of fermentation in the pantry. Temps dropped in New Hampshire over the last 3 days so ambient temp will be around 69-70F.

 

[20grit]

My experience with 1968 (which I really like) has been that it almost always drops out sooner than you would expect. The only way I have managed to dry out beers with that yeast is by building some pretty healthy starters.

You could try warming up a bit and rousing the yeast, but my experience says this won't make much difference.

 

[SteveHeff]

I ended up kegging both buckets, today. I placed 4.5 gallons of big beer in a keg, saving 1/2 gallon to mix with the smaller beer. This made for 3.5 gallons of "small" beer. No matter what, I have beer. And I will drink it and distribute it to friends and family, proudly. It may not be the beer I wanted, but it will be the beer I need.

On a non-comical side note, I brewed a brown stout, tonight. I'm pitching 4 gallons of wort directly onto the small beer yeast cake and I'll pitch a healthy 1968 yeast starter into another 4 gallons. I just want to see if there is any difference between starter yeast and yeast cake.