Fermentation Period!

[BarneyG]

Hey All,

I'm in the middle of making a wheat beer using these ingredients:

SAF premium wheat yeast K97.
BlackRock Wheat Can 1.7kg.
2 X Booster Bag Wheat(1kg).

My initial OG reading 1.050, the WORT has been hovering around 18C.
It has been bubbling now for 10 day's. :blink:

Is this normal for a wheat beer to ferment for so long? ( I heard 4-7 day's is the norm)

Or should I crank up the temprature to make the yeast more active?


Any advice is most welcome!

 

[GSRman]

hmmm i would be surprised if your OG was only 1050, with nearly 4kg of fermentables...

i'd either rack it to a secondary fermenter, or if you dont have one, bottle it when it finishes bubbling, or around the 14 day point, and go easy on the priming because its still got heaps of fermentables in it.

This will cause your beer to have a larger amount of sediment that you probably want though... so if you were thinking of buying a secondary at some point, now would be a good time

 

[therook]

GSRman,

There may be alot of unfermentables in that 4kg???????

Rook

 

[BarneyG]

I do have a second fermenter, but no were to store it So I will bottle straight away.

The OG was definately 1.050, I just assumed that the boster bag contained corn syrup for body.

I want to do a bulk prime using powdered wheat malt, I'm going to use about 200g, I have based this from the "Grumpy's calculator"

Is 200g to high now, cause of the fermentation length indicating that the brew is still high in fermentable's. :unsure:

 

[RobW]

Barney

What is your SG now? I'd really try to get it racked into the other drum & leave for another week. At the very least wait a few days after it finishes bubbling. Be careful priming with malt because you can get variable fermentability between batches. Why not just use sugar - you won't tell the difference and it's more consistent.

 

[BarneyG]

Hey KenEasy, I'll take a SG reading tonight, I heard that priming with malt will result in a better head retention and body. Where as sugar may make a dry taste B)

 

[GSRman]

I would expect there to be at least 750g of sugar in the booster bags, and even if it is unfermentable... if i put 4kg of anything into 22L of brew i still get a sg of higher than 1050.. more like 1057

find a way to whack it in the secondary for 2 weeks... the yeast is probably now eating the harder to munch sugars..

my current brew has been in the secondary for 1.5 weeks, and was in the primary for 8 days before that, its still burping every 10 mins or so..

how many L is your brew?

 

[BarneyG]

My brew is 23L, the current SG is 1.018, so I can only assume that there is maybe only a couple of day's left B)

I will rack it into the secondary fermenter I have, I assume that i must transport my submergable heater with it as well? :unsure:

This is my second batch of homebrew ever, so all your advice is much appreciated

 

[GSRman]

1018... hmm probably a bit more than a few days, the last .010 is the hardest... and you are probably aiming for something around at most 1011.


what i do, is i have a tub with about 5" of water in it, and i have my submercible heater in that, so it stops hot spots, and means when i rack to the secondary, i just whack the whole fermenter in the tub, i also drop a little bleach in there every now and again to keep the bugs out...

so that way i get my controllable temp, but dont have to worry about sterilising the heater etc..


basicly you dont want to keep the beer on the trub (the white crap) for more than about 2 weeks MAX...

thats why you rack, and the fermenting can chug along nice and slowly, at a good 'clean' temp

 

[RobW]

You may find the SG doesn't drop much more. K&K yeasts seem to struggle with extra malt, but let it sit in secondary for a week or two & you'll be OK. You may need to reduce the amount of priming sugar to about 140g - there's a table on the Grumpy's site that calculates priming sugar required by FG.

 

[GSRman]

psst ken, saf-yeast...

 

[RobW]

Yeah sorry - should have said dry yeasts. I've had SAFs stop at 1018 on all-malt extract worts and that was after aerating the kanoobies out of it & using a one litre starter.

 

[GSRman]

heheh airating the kanoobies.. nice

ive never used saf, ive so far only used the coopers dry packs and the 1084 irish liquid... even my biggest porky porter came down to 1011 from 1060

 

[RobW]

They keep fermenting but really slowly & they keep coming down after bottling. The first time I had one I put the usual 180 g of dextrose in the bulk prime & after a month or two they developed into gushers. Now if it happens I use maybe 120-140g and they are fine. (the other way is drink 'em all in the first 4 weeks)

 

[BarneyG]

I racked my brew last night, and got it of the yeast cake

Now, I'm thinking off bulk priming with 200g powdered wheat malt. :blink: I guess I'll just sit back have a few beer's and take a SG reading in a few day's B) Assuming that my SG final reads about 1.008.

 

[GSRman]

Barney, nice

just remember that malt only has about 70% the fermentables of sugar, so if you were going to prime with 200g of sugar, you may have to ajust your malt amount.

 

[BarneyG]

Good Point GSRman, I better make it 250g B)