Starters And Stuck Fermentations

[sinkas]

Hi all,
I reculutered a yeast form a favourite dutch (now belgian) microbrewer, and grew it up to a 2.5L starter.
To grow a nice yeast cake for a upcoming club brewday, I ther together a Belgian Blonde all extract beer, OG 1070 (0.6kg sugar)
Into this I threw about 2L of the starter that had completely finished fermenting.
I forgot to add Olive oil to the batch of beer as I normall use in place of aeration, so far no issues with attenuation doing this.
I figured there woudl be a bit of residual oil in the starter liquid, so chose not to root around aerating.

Pitched at 16C Gravity dropped to 1045ish in 3 days, and has not moved in the last 4 days,
Agitation and increasing temp to 25C, has made no difference.

Anyone have any similar experiances?

I am now stepping up another starter of the same yeast to 2L,

 

[newguy]

Yup. It happened to me when I wasn't aerating enough. Hasn't happened since I bought an oxygen setup. Good news, bad news. The yeast cake from this batch can still be used for your big brew day, provided you aerate/oxygenate the wort you pitch it into. Bad news is that you may not be able to save this batch.

First thing - it's never too late to add yeast nutrient. Some brew shops will call it yeast energizer. The stuff I'm talking about is a tan powder. Add 5 tsp of it to ~200ml water and boil the works in the microwave for at least a minute and dump it into the fermenter while it's still hot. Swirl the fermenter, but don't replace the airlock immediately because the hot vapour will condense and form a vacuum which will suck your airlock's water into the beer and possibly contaminate it. You should also add just a tad of diammonium phosphate (DAP). Some brew shops call this yeast nutrient. It's a white powder that kind of looks like clumpy/sticky salt or sugar. Add 1 or 2 tsp in the same way - by boiling in a small amount of water, or just boil the works altogether.

For the next week, twice a day, gently swirl the fermenter. Don't make lots of waves/splashing; rock just hard enough to liberate the CO2 in solution. If the beer still hasn't attenuated, you'll need to pitch a new starter. However, with this starter, oxygenate it very, very well about 2 hours before you pitch. If you have a stir plate, use that instead.

If the nutrient trick and repitch trick don't work, the batch is probably lost. Good luck

 

[Doogiechap]

Yup. It happened to me when I wasn't aerating enough. Hasn't happened since I bought an oxygen setup. Good news, bad news. The yeast cake from this batch can still be used for your big brew day, provided you aerate/oxygenate the wort you pitch it into. Bad news is that you may not be able to save this batch.

First thing - it's never too late to add yeast nutrient. Some brew shops will call it yeast energizer. The stuff I'm talking about is a tan powder. Add 5 tsp of it to ~200ml water and boil the works in the microwave for at least a minute and dump it into the fermenter while it's still hot. Swirl the fermenter, but don't replace the airlock immediately because the hot vapour will condense and form a vacuum which will suck your airlock's water into the beer and possibly contaminate it. You should also add just a tad of diammonium phosphate (DAP). Some brew shops call this yeast nutrient. It's a white powder that kind of looks like clumpy/sticky salt or sugar. Add 1 or 2 tsp in the same way - by boiling in a small amount of water, or just boil the works altogether.

For the next week, twice a day, gently swirl the fermenter. Don't make lots of waves/splashing; rock just hard enough to liberate the CO2 in solution. If the beer still hasn't attenuated, you'll need to pitch a new starter. However, with this starter, oxygenate it very, very well about 2 hours before you pitch. If you have a stir plate, use that instead.

If the nutrient trick and repitch trick don't work, the batch is probably lost. Good luck

Newguy, thanks for that very timely advice as I have a Saison that has been stuck at 1026 for the past 2 weeks :angry:
Oh and by the way, your signature is hilarious :lol:
Cheers
Doug

 

[mika]

There's one of the Whitelabs saison strains that's notorius for stalling. Also hot with Saisons is a good thing if you haven't already got it cranked.

Sinkas - My understanding was that Olive oil was quite less efficient than aeration of the wort, the advantage being that you don't suffer oxidation aging issues. I'd be aerating that starter and decanting the liquid if you were worried about oxidation.

 

[newguy]

Newguy, thanks for that very timely advice as I have a Saison that has been stuck at 1026 for the past 2 weeks :angry:

Did you use wyeast 3724 perchance? The one and only time I tried to make a saison I used that yeast and it stuck for me too. At the time I had no idea how to save it and I eventually had to dump the batch. I hope things turn out better for you.

Oh and by the way, your signature is hilarious :lol:

Thanks.

 

[Doogiechap]

Did you use wyeast 3724 perchance? The one and only time I tried to make a saison I used that yeast and it stuck for me too. At the time I had no idea how to save it and I eventually had to dump the batch. I hope things turn out better for you.



Thanks.

Yep 3724,
Mashed at 64. Started out fermenting the 40l batch at around 18 with a 2l starter from the stirplate and after day three upped it slowly to 26 over a few days. I didn't take gravity readings along the way and got a nasty surprise when I was looking at prepping the kegs for a transfer....... .

 

[sinkas]

Well bugger me dead,
I got ready to pitch my new starter, and the bloody thing has re-krausened, seems like the yeast were on holiday for a day or 4.