Jayf19
Active Member
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2016
- Messages
- 36
- Reaction score
- 0
Good day everyone
I want my question to be as thorough as possible and would like to have the input of other experienced brewers. I believe I have a fermentation problem that most likely stems from my mash temperature which I wasn’t able to stabilize during the process, which ultimately might have prematurely denatured the beta amylase enzymes. I’m hoping some of you can confirm or infirm my conclusion.
The recipe. I followed Kal’s Electric Creamsicle NEIPA recipe
Electric Creamsicle (New England Pale Ale)
My yeast was a London Ale III strain with a best before date set in February 2022. Since my recipe called form an OG of 1.052 with 11 gallons sent to the fermenter, I prepared a yeast starter of 2.75L with 263grams of DME to have a culture of roughly 443 billion active cells. Within 12 hours, the yeast had already entered the exponential growth phase. I let the starter on the stir plate for 60 to 72 hours before cold crashing it for 24 hours. On brew day, I pulled the starter out of the kegerator, decanted it and set it aside for the whole brewing process to give a chance to the yeast cells to adapt to room temperature, which was about 5 hours.
The grain used in my recipe was crushed to 0.045”, the mash process was done in a recirculating brew in a bag style system with a PH of 5.26. Unfortunately, my mash temperature, which was to be held at 160F for 90 minutes ended up ranging from 154F up to 164F. The rest of the brew process was completed without any inconveniences, although I did end up with 9.8 gallons of wort rather than 11 gallons. In any case feel free to question any steps that I did not detail if it helps identifying the problem.
My OG was right on target at 1.052. I chilled the wort to 66F, aerated it with Blichmann’s Oxygen Flow Regulator set to 1L of pure oxygen for 2 minutes with a .5-micron stone, pitched the yeast and my Tilt Pro and set the fermenting bucket in my fermenting room (repurposed refrigerator). My fermenting room was set to hold a steady temperature of 68F during the exponential growth phase, which has not been in issue.
Here’s a breakdown of the timeline of my fermentation:
Anyone has thoughts over what went wrong?
Anyone has experience with denaturing beta amylase enzymes too early?
I want my question to be as thorough as possible and would like to have the input of other experienced brewers. I believe I have a fermentation problem that most likely stems from my mash temperature which I wasn’t able to stabilize during the process, which ultimately might have prematurely denatured the beta amylase enzymes. I’m hoping some of you can confirm or infirm my conclusion.
The recipe. I followed Kal’s Electric Creamsicle NEIPA recipe
Electric Creamsicle (New England Pale Ale)
My yeast was a London Ale III strain with a best before date set in February 2022. Since my recipe called form an OG of 1.052 with 11 gallons sent to the fermenter, I prepared a yeast starter of 2.75L with 263grams of DME to have a culture of roughly 443 billion active cells. Within 12 hours, the yeast had already entered the exponential growth phase. I let the starter on the stir plate for 60 to 72 hours before cold crashing it for 24 hours. On brew day, I pulled the starter out of the kegerator, decanted it and set it aside for the whole brewing process to give a chance to the yeast cells to adapt to room temperature, which was about 5 hours.
The grain used in my recipe was crushed to 0.045”, the mash process was done in a recirculating brew in a bag style system with a PH of 5.26. Unfortunately, my mash temperature, which was to be held at 160F for 90 minutes ended up ranging from 154F up to 164F. The rest of the brew process was completed without any inconveniences, although I did end up with 9.8 gallons of wort rather than 11 gallons. In any case feel free to question any steps that I did not detail if it helps identifying the problem.
My OG was right on target at 1.052. I chilled the wort to 66F, aerated it with Blichmann’s Oxygen Flow Regulator set to 1L of pure oxygen for 2 minutes with a .5-micron stone, pitched the yeast and my Tilt Pro and set the fermenting bucket in my fermenting room (repurposed refrigerator). My fermenting room was set to hold a steady temperature of 68F during the exponential growth phase, which has not been in issue.
Here’s a breakdown of the timeline of my fermentation:
- Day 1
- Lag phase: 0 to 11 hours; ending gravity of 1.049
- Exponential growth phase started at the 11-hour mark
- Day 2
- Dry hopped first addition at the 31-hour mark
- Exponential growth phase ended at 37 hours (lasted a total of 26 hours); ending gravity of 1.024
- I caught a mild blow-off at the 37-hour mark and installed a blow-off tube before it could create a mess. Ironically, this also coincided with the stalling of the fermentation.
- Day 3
- 37 hours to 61 hours; gravity still at 1.024
- Although there is still a high krausen, there is no airlock activity and no changes in the gravity, which was confirmed through both the Tilt Pro and a manual hydrometer reading.
Anyone has thoughts over what went wrong?
Anyone has experience with denaturing beta amylase enzymes too early?