Troubled tripel

[binarycataclysm]

So, my second all grain attempt I decided that I'd do a simple tripel. I went to my local brewery and picked up 14 lbs of German pilsner, 2 lbs of carapils and I added 3 lbs of invert sugar ( boiled sugar with some lemon juice for 20 mins.) They also gave me .5 liters of belgian tripel yeast, but they didn't tell me which strain it was. Since I had so much yeast I didn't do a starter and just pitched directly. Ive never had trouble with this in the 10 beers I've made thus far... The og was 1.093 (need to work on my efficiency...). Fermentation started and was vigorous after 1.5 days which was a little slower of a start than I wanted. I started this at 60deg and it self rose over the week to 70deg. With the krausen largely gone after a week I decided to move this to a secondary. I measured fg and it was a whopping 1.046!!! There are still ~2 to 3 bubbles per min coming from the airlock so fermentation hasn't stopped. The beer tastes very sweet but it is really good so there is no infection that I can detect.

Should I be concerned about the fg at the moment or should I give it a week or two in the secondary to see how much it falls? Should I go pick up a vial of WLP550 and add it and if so should I make a starter with the current beer? Any advice is welcomed and appreciated!

Cheers,

John

 

[Calder]

Some Belgians struggle over the last bit.

Make sure you keep it warm. Depending on the strain, 70 F may not be high enough.

 

[Annunciation_Dan]

Calder to the rescue again!!!

A few weeks back I had a similar problem with my Belgian Tripel extract brew. Here is the advice he gave me, and may be useful to you:

"Belgian yeast like high temperatures. I'd run that one up to 80 F near the end of fermentation with no worries. The high temp helps to finish it off.

It's a high gravity beer, don't rush it. Leave it at least 4 weeks before doing anything. Even 8 weeks would not be a problem.

Your FG will probably be more determined by the amount of simple sugar you added (corn sugar, sucrose, candi, honey, etc). This will help bring down the FG.

You really want it to end up dry. Somewhere around 1.010. Not much you can do about it, the yeast are in charge now. Just wanted to mention this because once it hits 1.020, it is not going to be necessarily done. At 1.020 it would be too sweet for me.

If you listed your ingredients, someone should be able to give you an estimate of where you might expect it to finish."

 

[binarycataclysm]

Thanks for the excellent replies. I've moved the fermenter to a warmer part of the house. May have to put a heater in that area to get it near 80. I'll keep you posted on how things develop.

 

[Annunciation_Dan]

For reference, here is a full rundown of my problem and the recommendations I recieved:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/secondary-fermentation-gravity-438557/

 

[ballsy]

Your t-fer to secondary was likely premature with a bigger beer like this. These take much longer to develop and t-ferring off the yeast cake that early may prevent your FG from getting as low as it should be. I had a stuck Tripel at 1.023 (after 4 wks), but kept in primary (I don't rack to secondaries) so I simply stirred the yeast cake gently to re-suspend my buddies and they nibbled away some more until it finally got down to a more acceptable 1.018 FG at 5.5 wks. Unfortunately my response doesn't help you in current situation, hopefully the temp thing works with the yeast you do still have in there. I would also gently swirl the carboy every few days to help keep the yeast you do have from settling so they can continue to work away.

 

[jro238]

Yeah, that's a really big beer (even for a tripel) and is going to need some time in primary. I usually leave mine in there for about 4 weeks or so.