# IPA ferment stalled with Ringwood 1187



## searly333 (15/2/13)

Hi guys,

I'm currently fermenting a DFH IPA with Ringwood 1187 which has stalled at 1034 (from OG 1059). Have been reading Chris White & Jamil Zainasheff's "Yeast" book and I think it may have actually been the result of overpitching;

"Overpitching can decrease the lag phase but each individual cell will not be as healthy at the end of fermentation. Too much cell growth often leaves the cell in less than optimal shape for the remainder of that fermentation."

Have tried "rousing" the yeast to no avail. I am going to repitch tomorrow to attenuate down to expected FG.

I have a few yeasties handy; US-05
WYeast 1098 British Ale
West Coast Ale (Dry)

Any thoughts on which would be best for the given circumstances?

Cheers,
Luke.


----------



## dmac80 (15/2/13)

Hey Luke,
Just out of interest, how much yeast did you pitch?
I'd reckon to give the dried yeast a chance you may need to re hydrate it, i'd probably go with the US 05.
My 2c
Cheers
Dan


----------



## searly333 (15/2/13)

Hey Dan,

Thats the thing, i'm not really sure how much I pitched but I boiled up some DME on the stove and pitched the liquid/slurry from my harvested yeast of a previous brew into a growler and it made it up to approx 750ml. Of that I'd say 500ml was wort and 250ml yeast slurry. Left it for 24 hours @ 20 degrees.

The first three days it came up into a massive krausen and went from 1059 to 1045 but then in the next five days to 1034 and stalled.

Beginning to realise from reading and experience that consistent pitching rates are fairly important.

Yeah I was planning on rehydrating the dry yeast if I went that way.

Was maybe leaning towards the 1098 after reading its blurb on Wyeast website, but then again might be better off with the US 05, atleast I know my pitching rate then.


----------



## hoppy2B (15/2/13)

Well that kind of explains what happened with my starter where I put a bit of sugary water with a big lump of yeast and got less action than I expected.


----------



## Yob (16/2/13)

Hardly surprising at all, why would you make a starter from simple sugars?

Aah, taking instructions from coopers.. I see.


----------



## itguy1953 (16/2/13)

How are you measuring your SG?

You should be using a hydrometer NOT a refractometer.

With a huge krausen for 3 days then 5 more days fermenting, it should all be over. I suspect that your SG measurement is wrong.


----------



## searly333 (16/2/13)

Whats wrong with using a refractometer?

I would have thought it would be much more accurate, especially as it auto corrects for temperature.


----------



## searly333 (16/2/13)

Just went and pulled out the old hydrometer and what do you know, its bang on the expected FG of 1018.

WTF? Why is my refrac so far out?

What a waste of $60!!!


----------



## Fat Bastard (16/2/13)

Are you correcting your refrac reading for alcohol content?


----------



## searly333 (16/2/13)

No I didn't realise that was required.

Alcohol is lighter than water which means that I if I was adjusting for alcohol I would have to adjust the reading up, not down. If i adjusted the reading up it makes it even further out than what the hydrometer measured.


----------



## Fat Bastard (16/2/13)

Yes, that is true, but a refractometer measures the light refracting through the wort to give the SG, not the actual density of the wort. The scale on your refrac will read accurately until the yeast starts to produce alcohol. There is a refractometer calculator that comes with Brewmate (free download) or any number of them accessible by googling. I'd run your numbers through Brewmate myself to probe it, but I'm posting from my phone!

Hope this helps!


----------



## searly333 (16/2/13)

Fat Bastard said:


> Yes, that is true, but a refractometer measures the light refracting through the wort to give the SG, not the actual density of the wort. The scale on your refrac will read accurately until the yeast starts to produce alcohol. There is a refractometer calculator that comes with Brewmate (free download) or any number of them accessible by googling. I'd run your numbers through Brewmate myself to probe it, but I'm posting from my phone!
> 
> Hope this helps!


Yeah thanks for that.

Punched all the figures into the relevant converters and the corrected refrac reading came back at 1.0178, confirming the hydrometer reading.

Only problem now is that I had already pitched the rehydrated US-05 into the FV before I had this information.

Will cold crashing for a few days be enough to settle out the majority of the yeast without affecting the final product too much?

Edit: I've never used the cold crash method before.


----------



## hoppy2B (16/2/13)

Yob said:


> Hardly surprising at all, why would you make a starter from simple sugars?
> 
> Aah, taking instructions from coopers.. I see.


The suggestion that using other than malt to start yeast will stop or make the yeast less effective at digesting maltose is sheer lunacy in my opinion.
I use non beer yeasts to ferment my beer quite often and they do a perfectly good job.


----------



## felten (17/2/13)

hoppy2B said:


> in my opinion.


In my opinion you should do a little more research before forming an opinion and spreading it around.


----------



## hoppy2B (17/2/13)

felten said:


> In my opinion you should do a little more research before forming an opinion and spreading it around.


That's funny because that's exactly the sort of advice the numbrains who rabidly and forcefully thrust their opinion on others regarding the sugars one should put into yeast starts should be taking themselves.
This is a definition for maltase taken directly from my copy of 'The Encyclopedic World Dictionary'.

MALTASE : n. Bio-chem. an enzyme which converts maltose into dextrose and caused similar cleavage in many other glucosides.
(f. MALT + -ASE)


----------



## searly333 (17/2/13)

:icon_offtopic:

As entertaining as this bickering is boys does anyone actually have anything useful to say on the topic at hand?


----------



## MaltyHops (17/2/13)

If you bottle your beer in glass bottles, it might be a good idea to
leave your beer in the fermenter for a bit longer (a week?) as
US05 is supposed to have a higher attenuation rate than the
Ringwood - ie. at the point where fermentation by Ringwood
conks out, the US05 could go further.

If you bottled without waiting, the US05 could take off in the bottle
and drop the SG further - a drop of 0.002 SG corresponds to one
CO2 volume being generated - leading to overpriming and maybe
bottle bombs.

Normally you would wait till the ferment should be over, then take SG
readings over a few days and only if there's no change in SG (and
you're within ballpark of the expected FG) that it would be safe to
conclude fermentation is finished.

In your situation, it might be good to raise the fermenter temp up to
maybe low 20s' (good for yeast cleanup of the beer anyway) for the
extra wait-n-see period, which might help the US05 to get going (if it
is going to).


----------

