stuck fermentation booooo

[crakmunkey]

My brew got stuckededed booo.

Honey Type: 12 lb Desert Wildflower from Flagstaff
Yeast: Lavlin D 47 (2 - 5g packets)
2 tsp of Oak Barrel store brand yeast nutrient and 2tsp of DAP
2.5 gallons of water.
I aerated for 2 min with a large spoon after the honey was thoroughly dissolved. Then pitched the yeast.
Gravity: ~1119.
Temperature: 90 degrees F.
PH: didn't test oops

Day 1: nice and bubbly. Tastes pretty sweet. Added 1 tsp of nutrient and dap and aerated. very carbonated
Day 2: still bubblin’ away. Added ½ tsp of nutrient and dap and stirred like a mofo. very carbonated
Day 3: Stuck fermentation? Not really bubbling at all.
Day 4: added 1/4tsp of nutrient and dap and stirred like da mofo. Was sort of carbonated like before but not as much… Gravity: 1079@70
Day 9: Dead. .. booooo. Got ph strips that range from 3 to like 5.. tested and is hard to read. Looks like 3.8 -5 or something?? Added 4grams of calcium bicarbonate to see if that does anything.
Day 10: 1065@70 no bubbles
Day 12: still nothing. Added about half a gallon of water to see if that helps.

Since this is d47 and my O.G. was 1119 i suspect that my F.G. will be 1020.

 

[Oskaar]

Can you get us the following please:

1. pH
2. ambient temperature of the must and the area where it's fermenting
3. any additional helpful treatments you may have made to the batch

I just came back from Yuma, Az and it was pretty chilly there in the AM, it may be that your temp as brought the fermentation to a slower than normal pace.

Take a gravity and let us know.

Thanks,

Oskaar

 

[akueck]

If you pitched at 90 and it is now, say, 60--that could be your problem. Generally I try to pitch at the temperature which I will be fermenting at. Sometimes that means waiting hours and hours for things to cool down, but it has always been worth it (to me).

 

[crakmunkey]

currently it's about 68F, ~1035 (note: this is after adding half a gallon of water after the first testing... probably should have gotten a reading right before then right afterwards), and ph is 4-5ish... it's hard to tell with these strips but it doesn't look too dramatic.

Would a half gallon of water drop the gravity that much? I added it to see if that would help in case there was a problem with PH since I wasn't getting much of a reaction with the calcium carbonate.

 

[akueck]

What was the volume before adding water? 3.5 gallons or so?

You can calculate the SG before the water addition pretty easily. If your SG is 1.035 now, then multiply (just the thousandths digits) by 4/3.5 to find out what it was before. 35 * 4 / 3.5 = 40, so your SG would have been 1.040. Looks like things are moving along fine.

I suppose I missed asking you earlier what "no bubbles" means. None in the airlock or there are no bubbles coming from the must? The airlock is a terrible fermentation gauge, you can pretty much ignore the rate of bubbling there. SG is a true measure of fermentation speed, and you can see that yours is dropping.

 

[crakmunkey]

Yea.. that's what I meant. Sorry, the original post was mostly from my own notes

Interesting, i should write that calculation down, thanks!

Well, it was bubbling a lot for the first 2 days, then it stopped at about halfway through. Which was odd for me because usually it keeps on bubbling until about 12% for d47. It usually slows down towards the end instead of just abruptly stopping.

Thanks for your help. With the new gravity I can see it's almost where it needs to be. I'm thinking there might be some leak in my bucket as well. The airlock doesn't bubble at all anymore and hasn't since day 2.

I brewed this on Halloween so i need to have a creative name for it Hallomead?