probably mashed too high

[seehuusen]

G'day fellow brewers,

So I had one of those brewdays, where I just wasn't paying attention like I normally would.
My 2nd mash temp became my first, and I overshot my planned temps... I think this might the cause for my troubles...

Stuck ferment, from 1.049 to 1.023, steady for 5 days now.

Mash in at 67C for 15 mins
Raise for main rest at 71.5C for 45mins
Fly-sparge at 75.6C

That'd be the cause, hey?

Other than brett, good ol' brett, I'd be hard pushed to get the FG down, right?

Cheers for your input

/Martin

PS. Beer tastes fine, though slightly on the sweeter side. Thinking of what to do with it at the moment. Boil some hops and make it more bitter, dry hop it, both... Brett C could be a goer too

 

[Old Bloke]

Hi Seehuusen,
Pretty fair chance the high mash temperatures will have the org finish high. Dry hop will mask the sweetness somewhat. You could also try upping your ferment temperature and see if it restarts.
Cheers Chris

 

[seehuusen]

Thought as much, thanks Chris. I upped it to 22C when i roused the yeast 2 or 3 days ago, no drop in gravity.

 

[damoninja]

What was the grain bill?

What yeast was used, and how much?

 

[seehuusen]

23L Batch of porter.

3.50 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter 75.3 %
0.40 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L 8.6 %
0.40 kg Chocolate Malt 8.6 %

~250g of treacle/ molasses mix (50/50)

Yeast was Lallemand's ESB yeast, pre-hydrated of course.

 

[Jack of all biers]

23L Batch of porter.

3.50 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter 75.3 %
0.40 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L 8.6 %
0.40 kg Chocolate Malt 8.6 %

~250g of treacle/ molasses mix (50/50)

Yeast was Lallemand's ESB yeast, pre-hydrated of course.

Bam and there it is.

67C for 15min and 71.5C for 45min with 8.6% Crystal and 250gm treacle/molasses to boot. I'm not surprised your FG is sitting around 1023. What's more surprising is the low OG of 1049 considering the rest time in alpha amylase territory (optimum temp 67C). Your beta amylase (optimum temp 62C) barely got a look in at the 67C rest and as it was short then upped to 71.5C, that whatever it could have done at 67C wouldn't have been much before it was denatured at the temp of 71.5C (although your Alpha would have been happily randomly chopping away).

Have a read of this and think about what you're trying to achieve in your beer compared to what you are creating in your recipe & mash temp schedule choice. Not a criticism, but just have a think.

View attachment 09 - The role of enzymes.pdf

 

[seehuusen]

Thanks Jack, I suspected that was the culprit. I instantly knew I'd stuffed up, the minute i added 14L of water rather than 8L... This was the first time i got my steps wrong, and wasn't due to recipe construction, but rather the lack of reading my own instructions right on brew day

I appreciate the more detailed explanation, certainly not taken as criticism Thanks for the link to the pdf

Cheers,
Martin

 

[Danscraftbeer]

Similar situation I added enzyme post ferment G = 1.022 but it went the other way and bottomed out at 1.000. I used the recommended dosage so maybe if I used half the dosage it may have finished midway.

 

[seehuusen]

Is that the "drying" enzyme you're referring to Dan?

At this stage, I'm sitting with a very full bodied mid-strength porter. I don't mind the flavour at all, but keen to experiment with it.

 

[MHB]

Similar situation I added enzyme post ferment G = 1.022 but it went the other way and bottomed out at 1.000. I used the recommended dosage so maybe if I used half the dosage it may have finished midway.

Sorry
If you use half it will just take twice as long to get to the same gravity, this has over the years caused more than one bottle bomb!
The enzyme will keep working almost indefinitely at low temperatures (say <25oC), the recommended dosage is just a dose that gets the work done in less than the normal fermentation time.
Mark

 

[Danscraftbeer]

Thanks MHB that's interesting, good to know.

Is that the "drying" enzyme you're referring to Dan?

At this stage, I'm sitting with a very full bodied mid-strength porter. I don't mind the flavour at all, but keen to experiment with it.

Yeah it was Mangrove Jacks dry enzyme. It was an IPA. At 1.000 I was surprized that it wasn't really dry as I would expect. It still seemed malty with decent body and head retention. Just higher ABV than I wanted.

 

[SergeMarx]

I used Mangrove Jacks tripel yeast on stuck ferments. Just chuck a pack in there, re hydrated. I had pretty much the same situation recently - mashed high, conked at 1.024. Waited a fortnight and no change - so in went the Belgian tripel yeast - after another fortnight, it was 1.008. took about a week to start moving

Better than enzyme which will dry it out too much.

 

[Matplat]

Or you could try a saison yeast, not sure how much flavour impact it would have though....

 

[seehuusen]

Great ideas, thanks heaps. I decided to do a couple of experiments.

The majority was kegged with Williamette hops.
The rest was split between a champagne yeast and a red wine yeast.

I force carbed a couple of bottles. Straight, it's understandably got a big hit of malt, but that in turn lended itself to experimenting with different additives.
Splash of red wine gave dark berries, almost towards cherry ripe.
Splash of Frangelico gave a hint of ferrero rocher.
Splash of Malibu gave hints of roasted coconut, blending with the chocolate malt was like liquid Bounty.
(If anyone wants to try this, by a splash, I don't mean a shot, way less than that, perhaps not even half a shot... blend to your liking)

This has been a fun, un-expected experiment. Thanks again for all the feedback. When you stuff up, you gotta make the most of it. In my case a fun 3.3% Porter

 

[Danscraftbeer]

I tasted an interesting Porter at 4.5% (Cold Stream Brewery). http://coldstreambrewery.com.au/
It did have a kinda hot alcohol flavour with plumbs. (that's my flavour interpretation alone, never read any others)
Nice blend at 4.5% instead of say 7% I thought that was impressive. Someone there can cook. B)

 

[seehuusen]

Pitched 24L of similar gravity wort on top of the porter yeast cake.
This time it was definitely mashed at a lower temperature, 65C for 60 mins, fly sparge with 75.6C water.

First day it went absolutely gang busters, dropped about 29 points over 36 hours! Then it stopped at 1.020 (observed over 2 days).

I know I should probably leave it for longer to reserve judgement, but in the past 3 years of regular brewing, I've never come across this issue/ abrupt slowing down in fermentation.

I'm thinking that maybe the predominant yeast that survived is the lesser flocculating yeast cells from the first batch. Thoughts?

In any case, half a pack of wine yeast has been added to dry this out. Next time I'll start with a fresh yeast pack

As an update to the first batch, I bottled a few porters, adding different yeast strains to the bottle, without any sugar added. The bottles with the wine yeast have all gone hard, suggesting further fermentation has taken place.

Cheers,
Martin

 

[Dan Pratt]

^ ^ to get full attenuation I always increase temps after 72hrs. Raise the temp 1c every 24hrs after the first 72.

You can even start that after 48hrs as 95% flavour compounds are created during the first 36hrs of fermentation.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

High mash temps produce less fermentables, but gives a better mouth feel

Low temps give better fermentation but have a thinner mouth feel

 

[jbaker9]

Could have been a candidate for sour bugs... for these beers you want some non fermentables for the bacteria.

 

[seehuusen]

^ ^ to get full attenuation I always increase temps after 72hrs. Raise the temp 1c every 24hrs after the first 72.

You can even start that after 48hrs as 95% flavour compounds are created during the first 36hrs of fermentation.

Yeah, I've gone from 20 to 24 now... will see what happens
I generally increase when 2/3s of the gravity has dropped.