BeerBorg

If you do, you should start soon, it's a bigger beer. Clone Brews recommends three months aging.

John Sand wrote:If you do, you should start soon, it's a bigger beer. Clone Brews recommends three months aging.

Where did your gravity come in? The real one is 14.2 degrees plato so, somewhere between 1.060-1.070 I suspect?

My experience has been that you may not have to wait three months... I suspect it will be quite nice after only a couple/few weeks.

The recipe calls for a gravity of 1.073. My wort is at 1.084 now, but will get another 5+ quarts of water and a pound of candy sugar. That should put it very close.

BAM! After two days of no visible activity, and using hot water bottles to keep the fermenter warm in a cool basement, I was worried about the yeast. This morning the airlock is bubbling quickly, and the therm strip reads 84! Again I'm worried, but all I can do is apply ice and hope for the best.

RE: the slow start - did you make a starter or just pitch that vial directly?

It will still make beer regardless and should still ferment out - especially since you are going to feed it - that yeast is a beast in this regards. But it may have more amped up flavors if you underptiched for the 1.08 strength and extended the growth phase. (which would likely be the case unless you made a starter).

You may want to consider feeding it twice or even 3 times. Just to keep the yeast from getting lazy. Just split the water/sugar you are going to add into two or three seperate feedings 3-4 days apart. That should assure it attenuates fully.

My general rule of feeding is ~1.06< =don't bother, ~1.07=1 feeding, ~1.08=2 feedings, ~1.09+ = three feedings. But if underpitched then I'd bump those all down by .01

I would try to not let your beer get much higher in temp. I let that yeast free rise into the mid 80s during fermentation - it makes really good beer when pitched cool, allowed to free rise into the 80s during primary, and then finished cool. But not higher then mid 80s. But some of the best commercial Belgians made with that yeast follow a similar temperature curve, maintaining a flat temp is not necessarily a "good" thing with these yeasts. So don't stress over it too much.

Thanks Mash. No starter, but it was a big vial of liquid yeast, direct pitch for 5 gallons. It does suggest more yeast over 1.07. I'm not really trying to cool it much, more to keep it from warming up anymore. If I can get it back down to 75-77 I'll be happy. It has leveled off since this morning.

John Sand wrote:Thanks Mash. No starter, but it was a big vial of liquid yeast, direct pitch for 5 gallons. It does suggest more yeast over 1.07. I'm not really trying to cool it much, more to keep it from warming up anymore. If I can get it back down to 75-77 I'll be happy. It has leveled off since this morning.

FYI: Although those vials say they are direct pitch for 5 gallons, unless they are within say 1-2 months of the date of manufacture AND your OG is less then 1.06ish, then although they will still probably ferment your beer as long as your wort had enough nutrients and oxygen to support the growth necessary, they really don't contain the proper number of viable cells to do it as efficiently as possible. Hence the longer growth phase (lag time).

If your wort has enough nutrients and oxygen then they will eventually grow to a level that will ferment out the product just fine, but the growth phase is extended which produces more phenols/esters.

So for example, you said it took 2 days to start up. With a starter of WLP530 pitched at high krausen I typically see activity in 8 hours.

That all said, I will not say that it will make something "worse" (although many people would argue with me). Worse is in the eye of the beholder, and when it comes to fruity/phenolic yeasts where you are trying to get those flavors an intentional underpitch can be a useful tool to have in your belt IMHO. But you want to do it "on purpose" instead of "by accident" for it to be a true tool, most especially if you ever want to duplicate something that turns out to your liking. I will underpitch some wheats and Belgians on purpose, but when I do it, I'm doing it for a specific reason.

See this calculator - http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html - to give you an idea of what an ideal pitch rate is to get good flavor with least lag time based on how old your yeast is. Personally, I would be one who argues that this calculator, although ideal for American styles and Lagers and clean German ales, maybe over does it a bit for Belgians and Wheats if your trying to coax out more yeast flavor. But still it's a very useful tool to get an idea and if you want to underpitch for a specific reason to coax a bit more flavors out of your yeast and you know why you want to do this, then just go maybe 20% lower then what it suggests as a starting point and see how that goes for you... then tweak from there.

Thanks for that thorough explanation.
Do you recommend feeding it sugar as the primary ferment slows? Or wait until it stops?

I typically feed about every 2-4 days - when the krausen has settled down a bit from it's high point. No reason you should wait for it to "stop", as the idea is to keep the yeast in a feeding frenzy.

It will go nuts after feeding, so just be ready for the mess

Thanks again. I'll keep you posted.

Fed it half gallon of water and half pound of sugar. Foaming over a bit.

Bottled this today at 1.010! I guess it didn't have any trouble finishing. I'm drinking the sample now, mixed with light beer for carb n chill. No discernible off-flavors, certainly no fusel. Now, with the high temps and all, do I wash some of this expensive yeast?

I would wash it.

i'd wash it.

+1 to washing it.