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Fermentation seems slow

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K

Ken2029

NewBee
Registered Member
Oct 26, 2015
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Recipe:
3.1 pounds orange blossom honey
1 Gallon spring water
5 grams Lalvin 71B

Yeast was rehydrated with Go-Ferm and oxygenated with pure oxygen and .5 micron stone prior to pitch
Must oxygenated at pitch and 3 hours after after pitch.
Must degassed and oxygenated daily for seven days
1 gram Fermaid O added at 24, 48, 72 hours and then again at 7 days. I went a little past the 1/3 sugar break. (1.038 instead of 1.08 )

Today marks 7 days. The starting gravity was 1.121 and the SG today is 1.038. Tastes yeasty, but otherwise good.

I was expecting the SG to be lower. Any thoughts?
 
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Thanks. The last two trads I made were made using BOMM methods and as I recall, it was faster.
 
The bomm uses dap and in higher quantities than fermaid O. Dap creates fermentation spikes and faster ferments especially at those dosages but that's not necessarily a good thing. Many would argue it's a bad thing but it somehow seems to work for bomms.. or so they say since I never tried it myself. If you didn't count creating a starter as part of the fermentation time you should include it since that would be the growth phase of fermentation i.e your ferment would be actually longer.
Fermaid O ferments slower and at a more steady pace. 2 weeks would be a normal fermentation time and 3 weeks wouldn't be alarming if the temp is low and if you minimize dosage following tosna 2.0 protocol and some other factors.
Other reasons this might be slow is because you have created osmotic shock for the yeast since the concentration of honey was too high at the start of ferment. It should also be slowing down since you have more potential alcohol than the yeast's tolerance. It might also be slowing down since unlike perhaps the bomm, fermaid O and this protocol take more care of the yeast. This means that unlike the bomm the yeast will soldier on rather than quitting. 71b also has more alcohol tolerance at 14% rather than 12% for wyeast 1388 which means that more fermentation will happen before quitting. Also, according to the wyeast site it seems 1388 has a tendency to stall (at 1.035) whereas 71b might be more inclined to continue ferments under stressful conditions.
Just give it time and hopefully it should pay off
 
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One thing I'm curious about is whether or not I exceed the 71B 14% alcohol tolerance. In my controversial JAOM using modern fermentation methods experiment I ended up with 14% ABV using bread yeast. I really don't want to exceed the 14% tolerance of 71B, but I have a feeling that I will.
 
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