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sully

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Looking for some advice from the helpful crew on this forum on a brew which is behaving a bit odd...

Made the Christmas ale recently from Greg Hughes book, second use of a Grainfather so no doubt I may have made some mistakes somewhere along line, but story goes as follows.

Brew day was 20/08 and followed recipe pretty closely, so mashed at 67 and ended up using 2 packs MJ M21 Belgian yeast hydrated before pitching. Got a 1068 starting gravity and 12 or so hours later it was off.

Fermentation was at 22, which is a bit high I thought but as that's what the recipe called for (different yeast admittedly) I thought what the f*ck, let's stick with it.

After 10 days it was down to 1021, so expecting a few more points to be eaten up by those yeasties I left it alone. Went back to check a few times and 2 weeks later it was at 1020, so I thought it was done. But concerned it hadn't yet finished I gave the FV a bit of a heave ho about to rouse the yeast since that can sometimes work. Lo and behold, things kicked off again and it's been bubbling away again very slowly and steadily!

But....its now down to 1009! Thats a much higher attenuation than this yeast was meant to give, i make it 85%! My first thought was "infection, wild yeast, ah sheeet" but it's too early to say. All looks fine, smells fine and tastes bloomin marvellous.

It's been sat in the primary FV all this time, so all told it's been there for over 6 weeks! It's now stabilised so appears done so I'll be bottling tomorrow all being well.

So my questions to you lovely people are:
  • Is this yeast reawakening thing common?

  • Could the beer be infected, and I'm just not tasting it yet?

  • Is the yeast attenuation weirdly high?

  • How many bottles of 7.7% spiced Christmas ale is it going to take to make me go a little loopy? 😁

Appreciate any opinions on this one!
 
Some yeast strains are known for slumbering for a while and then restarting. I'm not familiar with that particular strain but I would comment that many Belgian beers have a high alcohol content so a Belgian yeast could well chug down to 1.009 of its own accord. Most importantly if it tastes good then you probably don't have a problem!


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Thanks guys, I can bottle happy in that case. With the extended time in the FV and the slightly schizophrenic yeast (plus a lack of experience on my part) it left me a bit worried, but perhaps I needn't be!
 
I have used MJ US West Coast yeast before (M44) and achieved 96% attenuation! I started a thread on here as I wasn't sure if I had calculated things correctly. The beer was fine. Perhaps some of these MJ yeasts can be beasts.
 
The MJ Belgian yeasts have a reputation for being beasts, so that level of attenuation isn't remarkable.
 
Seems like I'll need to research my yeasts a bit more in future and not always believe the manufacturer. Might be a bit of a pig trying to predict FG with this type of yeast.

Anyway, I won't care if it tastes good!
 
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