I brewed a strong dark Belgian three weeks ago that appears stalled. I hit the 1084 OG target and pitched Wyeast 1388. It blew-out initially , but when I racked it to secondary, it was still at 1030, and had a small cake layer for a big beer.
I understand this yeast is prone to stalling out at ~1030 and will often start up again in secondary (or just because.) But at what point should I take measures like re-pitchng to finish it off? Should I give it a couple of weeks or just a few days? Can 1084-1030 still work out if it comes to that? Any damage is saying fuck it, I'm mixing yeast strains and playing mad scientist once my original plan is gone?
Sean
Never move the beer out of the primary fermentor until it's actually done fermenting.
How much yeast did you pitch - a beer at 1.084 is definitely going to need more than just a smack pack (along with a nice shake or dose of O2) if that's what you pitched.
Also, these Belgian yeasts like being ramped up over time. A touch difficult with our ferm room, but you can kinda finagle your way around the room and eventually move the beer over to the hot box.
I've never had much luck with pitching new yeast. If you do, make a starter, make sure it's at high krausen, and pitch it.
The no-fail method I empoy if I get an unexpected stuck fermentation is to rack the beer onto a yeast cake of another beer. Tons of yeast, a little O2 pick-up, and you'll be back off to the races.
Use mrmalty.com to better understand your pitching situation in the future. You input your SG and it will tell you how many cells you need to properly ferment it, and then translates that in to starter size or number of smack packs or dry yeast packets you need to get that cell count. As Kyle recommends try ramping up the temp perhaps that may help, try to find a warmer spot in the ferm room or even go to the hot box. I think more temp and more time and it should be fine. A 1.085 beer with any yeast is gonna take a long time, or maybe my perception is skewed because im mainly a lager dude....I don't know. Also, if you're getting nervous and gonna pitch more yeast, It's my understanding that any flavors you are gonna get out of yeast happen in the first day, if that's correct you should be totally safe to add some champagne yeast or some S-05 to finish the job. I think there are folks around here with better answers for this than me, but if you're patient it will pay off.
Thanks Joe and Kyle,
You're right, I was lazy in my yeast approach, and ultimately that was the cause of the stall. I have always had great yeast efficacy (fast and full) at home for big ales because I have an ideally warm fementing area, but I should have known it would be more difficult wtih this yeast strain and house ferm temp. Next time I will be precise.
I suspect I will just move it to a warmer spot and let it sitt for 2-3 week. It's only 8 gravity points, or 12% short of target, so it could/should be fine. If i decide to re-pitch, Joe, I'll go with a neutral, high efficiency strain, but I'm leannig against it right now.
Thank again for the input.
Sean
So I went to move it to a warmer spot today, and saw some froth. Took a reading and it was down to target basically at 1022. And it cleared up a bunch. Seems back on track, can't say for sure why. We'll see how it turns out.