Flocculation issue, no carb.

[Pilchard]

I have been playing with the mangrove jacks yeast in my last few brews and am getting lovely bright beer from them. I have only recently gone from kits and bits to all grain. 2 AG brews both using MJ yeast. The third used Muntons Gold.

I am noticing a trend in better yeasts clearing a lot better but not carbing as fast, is this normal.

I have now used 3 MJ yeasts and apart from better taste they are a bit slower than kit yeast and no where near as quick as a cultured coopers SA yeast. I am noticing they also don't finish as dry as as the CSA yeast.

The issue I am having is that at 18degC they take several weeks to carb up to drinkable and the dark I have down has nothing after a week. Are the kit yeasts something weird, I can do the same beer, 3 weeks in fermentor diff yeasts and get massively diferent results.

The turning point in yeasts for me was a MHB budget Blonde I have drunk on tap and in bottle, I spilled the whole yeast pack that was to go into the AG wort and had to sub an experimental (for me) re cultured CSA yeast. It brewed out very dry, but crabbed out easily.

So the real question is can I let a yeast go too far, I still had airlock activity up until 3 days before bottling then gravity settled, the brightest beer I have ever made but no carb at all at 7 days, to the point I put a stubby into a 2l bottle and shook it to see if it has and gas in the beer??

 

[verysupple]

You noticed they take longer to carb when they clear faster. This makes sense because yeast that flocculates better ends up at the bottom of the bottle in a layer rather than suspended in the beer, so there's less yeast doing the work of carbonation. It's fine, it just takes a little longer.

I've never recultured Coppers yeast myself, but I've read that it's quite highly attenuative. So that'll explain why those ones finish drier.

So the real question is can I let a yeast go too far,...

Nope, the yeast won't go "too far". You should always let the yeast ferment to completion before packaging (unless naturally carbing a lager old school style...but that's a whole other story).