stuck fermentation?

[Brian49]

Hi guys, for the first time in my brewing years, I have a fermentation that, after a normal vigorous ferment seems to have stuck at SG 1.022 after 9 days. The BF recipe predicts about 1.013 as final SG, and the wort tastes sweet. The recipe (in BF) is a wheat beer (with barley also) and includes 200g of dextrin malt which i have not used before. the yeast is mangrove jacks (dried) Bavarian wheat yeast.
I am wondering what to do. Should I just continue until 14 days and bottle (and prime as usual) and risk a bottle burst or should I add some more yeast to the wort?
I have to admit that I made a mistake on the water calculations so I only got 15L instead of 19L therefore the OG was 1.063, rather than the predicted 1.054. Even allowing for that a final SG of 1.022 seems too high. Any advice would be great.

 

[Sandy Feet]

This far in, you don't have many options. Try to swish some of the liquid and bring the temperature up a little bit. Wait out your 14 days.

 

[Brian49]

Thanks. I am in the process of increasing the temp. The yeast has working temp range of 18C to 30C (64F - 86F). At the moment it is at 25C (77F). Is there anything against adding more (different) yeast?

 

[Minbari]

Hi guys, for the first time in my brewing years, I have a fermentation that, after a normal vigorous ferment seems to have stuck at SG 1.022 after 9 days. The BF recipe predicts about 1.013 as final SG, and the wort tastes sweet. The recipe (in BF) is a wheat beer (with barley also) and includes 200g of dextrin malt which i have not used before. the yeast is mangrove jacks (dried) Bavarian wheat yeast.
I am wondering what to do. Should I just continue until 14 days and bottle (and prime as usual) and risk a bottle burst or should I add some more yeast to the wort?
I have to admit that I made a mistake on the water calculations so I only got 15L instead of 19L therefore the OG was 1.063, rather than the predicted 1.054. Even allowing for that a final SG of 1.022 seems too high. Any advice would be great.

OG was 9 pts too high, i would expect the FG to be too high as well. i would have topped up your wort before fermting it to get the gravity correct.

You can try adding more yeast but I bet it is just done. all fermentable sugar is digested

 

[Brian49]

This far in, you don't have many options. Try to swish some of the liquid and bring the temperature up a little bit. Wait out your 14 days.

I have begun increasing temp to 25C (77F). Is there any disadvantage to adding more yeast?

 

[Minbari]

I have begun increasing temp to 25C (77F). Is there any disadvantage to adding more yeast?

Only disadvantage is that if there is no more digestible sugar, then you have a yeasty beer (or you will have to crash longer to drop it out)

 

[Brian49]

OG was 9 pts too high, i would expect the FG to be too high as well. i would have topped up your wort before fermting it to get the gravity correct.

You can try adding more yeast but I bet it is just done. all fermentable sugar is digested

Thanks. I had calculated that the adjusted FG would be about 1.017, that is why I was concerned. I think I'll just cross my fingers!

 

[Brian49]

Only disadvantage is that if there is no more digestible sugar, then you have a yeasty beer (or you will have to crash longer to drop it out)

I might do that then, thanks again

 

[Minbari]

Thanks. I had calculated that the adjusted FG would be about 1.017, that is why I was concerned. I think I'll just cross my fingers!

Can always give it more time. in the end it will be beer, but it will be sweeter than you anticipated

 

[Brian49]

Thanks to all for all your advice

 

[J A]

Make sure your recipe is sharable and post a link. I'm guessing it's a 5 gallon/20 liter batch so your dextrin malt is around 10%. Dextrin sugars don't ferment out and would leave the gravity high but those sugars shouldn't necessarily register as sweet in the flavor. Disregard...miscalculated

Some yeasts will stall and restart. Belgian yeasts are notorious for it. It's altogether likely that if you let it sit 2 weeks it'll start up again and drop at least into the mid-teens. A swirl of the fermenter definitely can't hurt.

 

[Donoroto]

One question nobody has asked yet: how are you measuring your gravity? If it’s using a tilt, then that Bavarian wheat yeast might have left more crud than usual on it and skewed the readings.

Let it go for the usual time. Don’t add more yeast, it will have no effect. Rouse the existing yeast. The higher temperature (77F) will let the yeast finish its job. 022 is not that far from 017.

 

[Dave Y]

At this point, IMO you have 2 viable options
1) agitate the daylights out of it
2) warm it up, leave it there and ramp the temp back down to normal range after a while - a day or 2.

You could re-pitch but I don’t think there’s much left for the yeast to do and most importantly, not enough to start off. I did have a similar stall about a year ago and I wrote it off. I tried all the usual stuff - agitate, warm, warm some more, agitate some more while my starter was going. Re-pitch, wash, rinse, repeat. It got down to 1.018 and I still had airlock activity, but no gravity movement at all. More importantly, it wasn’t good - but, that wan’t really the point since I’d already written it off. I wanted to see if I could recover it and for me, it was no. I left that beer in the kettle for a while - probably a month and I kept messing with temp, finally bringing it back to the yeast ‘range’. When I brought the temps back down into the range, there was a distinct uptick in airlock activity, but the gravity wouldn’t move from 1.017-1.018. After 4-5 weeks I figured I’d learned all I could.

Coincidentally... MG Bavarian wheat is what I was using when this happened... hmm...

 

[Bigbre04]

if you really want to save this batch you could try adding a some priming sugar and rousing the yeastup. the priming sugar might get a little more activity out of the yeast. you could also try adding some pastuerized fruit juice(without preservatives). this might help kick start the fermentation, but you are pretty far into the fermentation. What is the danger in ruining a potentially bad batch? Also warm it up closer to the high end of the yeast.

the current grav is high. time and temp might help.

belgian wit yeast can be sketchy, but is generally pretty tough and fast fermenting. It may have gotten cold or you may not have had enough cells at pitch(old or oxidized yeast).

good luck.

 

[Dade City Dan]

Just had this happen to me. I was 10 points short on a Dunkelweizen. Went to the brew shop and got a package of liquid hefeweizen yeast. Made a starter and let it spin for 36 hours. Reoxygenated the wort and added the starter. First day nothing. Then got a solid fermentation bubble. Been going for a few days and the SG is down 8 points.

 

[Craigerrr]

A couple things that don't seem to have been brought up as possible issues.

If your mash temperature was high you may not have got the expected conversion. No amount of yeast, or other efforts will solve this.

If your mash pH was too high, or too low this could also affect conversion. Same deal, nothing you can do about this now.

Let us know how you make out

 

[Bigbre04]

A couple things that don't seem to have been brought up as possible issues.

If your mash temperature was high you may not have got the expected conversion. No amount of yeast, or other efforts will solve this.

If your mash pH was too high, or too low this could also affect conversion. Same deal, nothing you can do about this now.

Let us know how you make out

You have never met diastaticus lol...can drop to negative plato....

 

[Dave Y]

A couple things that don't seem to have been brought up as possible issues.

If your mash temperature was high you may not have got the expected conversion. No amount of yeast, or other efforts will solve this.

If your mash pH was too high, or too low this could also affect conversion. Same deal, nothing you can do about this now.

Let us know how you make out

"OG was 1.063"

that’s not pH but from a conversion standpoint his target as 1.054 and he hit 1.063, extraction seems pretty good here. Good point about the pH & water though.

 

[Dave Y]

And... JUST in time for this thread:

I brewed a Märzen over the weekend. I didn’t have yeast for it until early March, locals didn’t have it and my usuals didn’t have the WLP820 I’ve had success with. I did find an Omega OYL107. Unfortunately when I received it week 1 of March, the mfg. date was mid October ’24. A solid 5 months old; 6 months is the oldest yeast I’ve successfully used with a starter, so I figured WTH. I may have inadvertently used older yeast, some put best by dates, others user mfg. date. But anyway... I put a 1.6l starter on with some DME and let it run about 20 hours. A couple longer than usual but shouldn’t be a big deal.

The SG hit 1.064 pre-pitch and 1.061 post pitch- my target was 1.060. 2 days hence, not even a hint of activity in the airlock or on the tilt. I had a Mexican lager strain shipped in the same package, WLP940, best by August ’25 and that worked - expectedly, so I don’t think this was an issue of shipping, getting to hot etc. Rather, there just didn’t appear to be any viable yeast in the package at all.
- give it time: with one exception I can remember, the longest lag time I’ve seen with a starter is 18 hours. The one longer time was trying to recover the batch at 1.022 that got stuck. I did get to 1.017 eventually but it wasn’t brilliant.
- it’s a lager, it will take longer: yeah, even so, this one is not moving at all off the starting gravity. Not even any subtle movement in the airlock.

The good news is, I found WLP820 today and ordered it after checking the date. When I get it I’ll just take some of my wort, make a starter and pitch when it’s ready. Minor delay, hopefully. Which will give me time to make more room in at least one keg

 

[Sandy Feet]

That has only happened to me once when somebody new at my old brew store took the yeast from the wrong stack. I used to think that pitching a little more yeast would help me ferment down the extracts a little more. It didn't, but I got into the habit of using a bigger pitch when I went BIAB. The yeast I buy now is made with a large pitch, and it starts quickly. I definitely had activity on Sunday within 6 hours. If I brew a lager, it is about 18 hours max, but usually sooner.