I think I may need to re-pitch…I used 6.6 pounds of bavarian wheat extract, 60 minute boil. Not sure if hips are relevant. Aiming for a small wheat but ran into a hitch with fermentation. My OG was 1045. I dry pitched safbrew T58 at 70 degrees. Aerated well. Fermentation started within 12 hours and was steady for one day. Krausen was light and foamy but fell almost entirely after one day. Bubbling has slowed and all but stopped. I took a gravity reading and got 1020…This is day 3.
The 1020 curse… It’s somewhat common with extract. Extract has more unfermenable sugars than a similar AG wort. At this point you’re probably best off to let it ride for a couple weeks. The real test will be how it tastes after 2 weeks.
No need to repitch your yeast is still doing its jobs even thought you see little to no activity and everything has fell. Just let it finish its job. Your gravity dropped from its orginal so you know it’s working. Maybe take another gravity reading around day seven or so and should be lower than first time. In mean while relax and enjoy some beer’s.
Took another gravity this morning and is still at 1020… Not sure what to do. Krausen has completely fallen and airlock activity has all but stopped. It tastes alright but even though I was going for a lighter beer, I don’t want it to be below 3% which looks like where I’m headed. Advice please… :?:
[quote=“Frenchie”]How are you taking gravity readings? Hydrometer or refractometer?
If hydrometer, have you verified accuracy with water?
If refractometer, have you corrected for presence of alcohol?
Good advice from both porkchop and damien. Just grasping at straws here.
:cheers:
Ron[/quote]
Never thought to test the hydrometer. I have used it fir several batches though and have not had fermentation stall like this. I went ahead and tested against water and yeah 1000. I’ve been sitting at 1020 for 6 days now.
Used this yeast twice before someone told me T-58 was notorious for high final gravity. Maybe a small starter of 05 [ needs to be active] at this point might drop it down? Not sure, I just left mine that way, then started using liquid yeast strains.
Also if you add a strain now that finishes well, you won’t get anymore different flavors. Those Belgian flavors came during the initial ferment, stay dominant in the batch.
If the gravity has been sitting at 1.020 for six days fermentation has stopped. If your measurements are accurate then the beer only attenuated about 56%. Should be more like 70-75%. The question is why did the yeast stop working. Did you keep the temp of the wort constant? Yeast don’t like fluctuating temperatures. If the temp drops too much they will just stop working, which is what I suspect happened.
A couple of things you can do now. If you are satisfied with the taste of the beer wait a few more days and bottle it. The reason for waiting is so that the yeast have plenty of time to clean up the by-products created during fermentation. Another thing you could try is to warm the beer to around 70 degrees and rouse the yeast and see if fermentation starts again. Good luck!
Thanks for the advice everyone. I will be trying to stir up the brew after it warms to 70ish. Its been really cold here so maybe the fluctuation in temp is the culprit.
