Stuck ferment :(

[bracconiere]

so this is a first for me....i dumped 10 gallons of juice onto my old yeast cake, along with 4lb's sugar....it's been sitting at 1.045 down from 1.067, for a week now!

i tried pitch a pack of juice turbo to see if it would finish it off, but not so far yet...any way i can save this batch? never had a stalled cider before!


edit: it smells bad....still would rather figure out if i can finish it, hate to waste $35....could always use it for window cleaner....or lighter fluid....

 

[bracconiere]

i needed the fermenter, so i dumped it.....but if anyone still has any ideas in case it happens again......

 

[bernardsmith]

Here's my take: when you pitched another yeast into a stalled batch you basically tossed something healthy into what might have been a systemic problem. Or to put this another way, when you have a problem you don't assume that repeating any action will create a different outcome. What you do is turn the process on its head.
1. You take some fresh yeast and create a small starter of say 1 cup of liquid.
2. When the starter is very active you take the same volume from the stalled batch and add THAT to the starter. (You have just diluted any problem in the stalled batch). Watch and wait. When the starter batch is again active
3 You take the same volume (now 2 cups) from the problem batch and add that to the starter. You watch and wait
4. And you keep on repeating this until 100 percent of the problem batch has been transferred to the starter.

What you might do BEFORE you create the starter is
a) Pump air (O2) into your stalled batch. Perhaps the yeast never had enough O2 when they were beginning to bud and reproduce during the lag phase. You can do that by shaking the carboy, whipping air into it or pumping air into it.
b) Check your notes to see if you forgot to add nitrogen and other essential minerals. If you did and the ABV right then is less than 9% you can still add the nutrients.
c) Check the pH. Too low a pH will prevent the yeast from fermenting (the pH needs to be above about 3.0)
d) determine what the SG was and so the potential ABV is and match that against the yeast you selected. It's possible that the yeast you pitched reached their tolerance for alcohol long before they could eat up all the sugars you asked them to change to ethanol.

 

[bracconiere]

Well thanks for the reply....i took a risk in the beginning, i just dumped 10 gallons of juice and 4lb's a sucrose onto a yeast cake that smelled like turpintine.....lol

i did check the ph, was 3.8....something i thought was weird, was for a dead batch...when i dumped the turbo pack in, it fizzed up like it had a bunch of lazy yeast in it....

thanks for the idea about adding it incrementally to another fermenter though....if i have the problem again i'll give that a shot...just do up half a gallon in my other 15 gallon bucket, then add 1 gallon daily to it for 10 days, see if that at least would get me window cleaner....

i wasn't actually doing the same thing, i orginally just dumped 10 gallons of cheap juice on my, semi old, yeast cake....so i thought the turbo yeast would add turbo nutes to it....

 

[wasully]

when i dumped the turbo pack in, it fizzed up like it had a bunch of lazy yeast in it....

Wouldn't the fizzing up just indicate CO2 in suspension?

 

[bracconiere]

Wouldn't the fizzing up just indicate CO2 in suspension?

good thought, might have been....