Uncharted territory with high gravity yeast (high temp question)

[superiorsat]

Since this is a juicy you are making I would suggest reading this ( " Northeast" style IPA ) thread and the length people go to to keep oxygen out of this style of beer. I brew high gravity beers all the time and the only time I added extra oxygen was when I ran out of pure oxygen at about 10 pm on an Imperial Stout so next morning I had to run a get another can to oxygenate. Incremental feeding of the yeast ( I prefer honey ) will keep the yeast working lowering FG and raise ABV. Back in the days of an igloo cooler mash tun I had to feed the yeast to get beers over 10% but with a 20 gallon mash tun holds enough grain to get your SG just about any where you want especially if only doing a single 5 gallon batch. If I have a beer that has slowed and is looking like it might not finish as low as I want I'll hit it with a little honey to get it going again. Sometimes I will add a dry yeast with a dose of honey to finish it out which doesn't need to be
re-oxygenated to work.

 

[DuncB]

Dear @icebeat
I'm sorry if you interpreted my advice and attempted disentanglement of a gravity defying set of facts that you presented us on the forum as sarcastic and intolerant.

Quite the opposite of intolerance from me with multiple posts looking at the recipe you used, the info you gave us, also looking at your previous thread posts and seeking clues to what was going on.
Those guys from genus brewing are talking about making an old ale or barley wine not a hop bomb IPA and do say big starter, yeast nutrient and rousing to get the yeast off the bottom. You are at the blood letting side of medicine, when anyone was ill they used to bleed them. Those who survived they said it was because they had bled them. Eventually when someone compared ill not bled and ill bled they found the unbled survived more. Try rousing the yeast without aerating it that will work better.

I didn't want you to interpret it as sarcasm, there wasn't any need for that, the facts you presented seem dire or fantastical and thought you wanted some help to make good beer.

A recipe and a set of ingredients a great cake does not make.

Probably just leave it with your statement

Lol so you're saying I don't know how much grain and ingredients, and temperatures went into my own recipe

 

[Yooper]

What's confusing about the numbers specifically? I just mentioned the max alcohol tolerance of the yeast as a reference for the ABV values I have given. As in, I may try to get the FG to be 0.92...thus giving an idea how high the ABV could possibly go.

Your hydrometer won't go to .92. It WILL go to .992. You're missing a very important digit! So, if you're trying for .92, that will be impossible. Even straight ethanol isn't that low!

 

[Kent88]

In White and Zainasheff's book about yeast, they do recommend aerating with pure oxygen if the gravity is above 1.092. If the wort is above 1.083 they recommend aerating a second time 12-18 hours after pitching yeast (for those of you with the book, it's in chapter 4).

While this recipe had the potential to be a high gravity beer, it is not.

 

[superiorsat]

I agree this is acceptable " aerating a second time 12-18 hours after pitching yeast " ( not that I do it myself with the one exception where I was short but to each his own) not 6 days in, which is where his beer is sitting at from the start of this post and was planning on continuing to aerate after day 7 on a juicy IPA that I would say is not high gravity.

 

[jerrylotto]

It would depend on how active the yeast are at that stage. Once healthy fermentation starts and Krausen forms, there is no need to oxygenate again. Once you pass the lag stage, dissolved oxygen is used up during the logarithmic phase when yeast multiplies. All of the work that we want it to do is done in the third anaerobic stage. Oxygen is no longer scavenged at this point and you want to exclude it fastidiously to avoid off flavors resulting from oxidation.

 

[ThatVideoKid]

Lol so you're saying I don't know how much grain and ingredients, and temperatures went into my own recipe? Because that's how you know that the figures were correct. I posted this question out of a desire for civil discourse, not dismissive intolerance and sarcasm.

In terms of "proving" my views on aeration, I shouldn't have to do this, but here are some examples:

https://byo.com/article/fermenting-high-gravity-beers-techniques/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/aerating-during-fermentation.247850/


Either way, when I aerate, the FG lowers, when I don't it doesn't. So I don't see how that's not a way to increase ABV. I'm sure there's a tradeoff in when to stop aerating, but I don't understand how you think it's wholly detrimental.

Well if it's bone-dry (which I like), high in alcohol (which I like), and hoppy (which I like a lot), then I will let you know I've made another successful brew. I think I'm qualified to say that I like my own brews?

Again, needless intolerance of views that may be different than yours.

I think people are more questioning the 1.044 gravity reading than the ingredients you used, because 1.044 is nearly impossible with that recipe.

Is it possible you took the reading at >120 degrees? Or took the reading before the sugar was added?

 

[jerrylotto]

At least let's try to at least normalize this conversation. High gravity beers generally start with an original gravity over 1.100. My bourbon stouts start out around 1.125 and end up at around 12%-14% ABV with a final gravity between 1.020 and 1.040. Mid gravity beers typically start around 1.060. My IPAs start between 1.060 - 1.080 and end up in the 1.010 range for an 8% ABV target. Even my lagers start out around 1.070. I have never had a final gravity below 1.010 with a single exception. The only thing I've ever brewed that started out under 1.050 and the only one that turned in less than 1.0 final gravity was hard seltzer, because it was basically just water and sugar, turned into water and alcohol (which is less dense than water). Any dissolved solids (salts, minerals, organics) are going to INCREASE your specific gravity. The only reason gravity readings work to calculate ABV for brewing is because you measure the DIFFERENCE between OG and FG which should be ascribed almost exclusively to sugar conversion to alcohol. So I hope you can see the reaction that we have to a 1.044 starting gravity being referred to as a "high gravity beer." You claim that to have confirmed the numbers but they just don't make any sense. That is why everyone is grasping at straws trying to find fault with your measuring technique. These data are representative of about 10 years of home brewing more than a dozen batches each year and I don't claim to be the most experienced brewer in this thread by a long shot.