Anyone ever use WY1388?

I'm fermenting a Belgian dark strong ale and when I looked at some of the flavor profiles of the many yeasts to choose from, WY1388 sounded like just what I wanted out of the beer, so I went with it and ordered it. The fermentation all looked fairly normal, just not all that vigorous, but no biggie. It was fairly steady with the pace and then the pace slowed down and after a couple of weeks it looked like it had "finished" primary since it was only bubbling about once every 25 seconds or so. So, I checked the gravity and it was 1.042. WTF?

Ok, the WYeast website says this yeast has a bad habit of stalling around 1.035 and that if it happens, to rack it or aerate it and that will encourage it to finish fermentation. Not a big deal, so I aerated it with my aquarium pump and stone for a second time and also added a tsp of Fermax yeast nutrient. That has to do it, right? Well, the next day it looked like it was going to get started again. There was some more foam on top (not from aearation) and the bubbles were coming about every 15 seconds. Hey, it must have worked, but it's still so slow.

That was 4 days ago and it's still bubbling about once every 12-13 seconds. So, I check the gravity. Unreal. It's 1.042. WTF?

I've never had a beer act like this before. It seems like the yeast is going to just keep fermenting forever at a very slow pace and maybe one day this beer will finish, but I'm not about to wait for months for this thing to finish. BTW, it's been at 70-72 F this whole time.

Does anyone have any experience with this yeast? If so what did you do to make it happy and finish the job?

I'm about to just go get another yeast and see if it can finish the fermentation because this is getting ridiculous.

Well, last week I added a pack of CBC-1 yeast straight to the fermenter. This changed absolutely nothing. No increase in the bubbling rate. No apparent change. Nothing. I racked it to a new carboy to get it off the first yeast cake to see if that does anything. No, not really. It's the same. The gravity is now at 1.040, which it has been for the past week. The bubbling is steady. You can see the little bubbles rising up the side of the carboy and the airlock bubbles about once every 30 seconds, but the gravity just stays put. I guess I just have to let this sit for months. Unreal.

Just have to check, are you measuring the gravity with a hydrometer or refractometer?

I'm using a hydrometer. I don't have a refractometer.

I just checked again today. It's still at 1.040. It's quite amazing to me. It's been sitting there for so long and I see bubbles rising all day every day. There's even a steady layer of foam on top, albeit thin. But the gravity just doesn't budge and hasn't for weeks. I took a taste of it today and it's really strong. I'm starting to wonder if my calculations are off. I measured OG of the wort, which was 1.084, but during fermentation I added 1.5 lb of honey. Beersmith calculated that it would make it an effective OG of 1.092. I have no doubt that it's correct because honey is basically 95% fermentable sugars. And at this point it should be no more than 7% ABV, so I don't think it's a matter of the yeast struggling at high ABV. But it tastes like it's already high ABV and it doesn't taste overly sweet like unfinished beer.

I'm also starting wonder if this is a faulty hydrometer or something. I broke my last one and bought this one from Amazon for $7. It seemed to measure OG correctly because it was roughly the same value predicted by Beersmith.

The finicky WY1388 shouldn't even be the dominant yeast anymore. CBC-1 should have taken over and started getting the job done, but it doesn't seem like it has.

I just can't figure it out.

I would first check your hydrometer against distilled water to make sure the scale has not slipped.  At this point, it has been in the fermenter long enough that you shouldn't be seeing occasional bubbles unless the temperature is swinging and the beer is degassing due to that. 

What temperature are you fermenting at (the fermenter, not the room temperature)?  You may want to bump it into the mid-70's if you can to get the yeast to finish off. 

If it does not taste sweet at 1.040, I would put money on your hydrometer being off.

A number of the Belgian strains are thought to be mutated wine yeasts. It can take temperatures as high as 90oF for them to dry out a beer.

Aeration and *sometimes* a bit of nutrient are also viable methods. Nutrient is a lot more effective at the start of fermentation because it helps build cell walls while budding. Later there is not much budding, so the impact is limited to replacing any nutrients that have been depleted or severely diluted by adjunct sugars.

A modern method is to create all malt wort and control temps for the first 24 hours. Then allow the temperature to free rise for the next 24 hours. The adjunct sugars then get added at 48 to 72 hours into fermentation.

brewfun said:

A modern method is to create all malt wort and control temps for the first 24 hours. Then allow the temperature to free rise for the next 24 hours. The adjunct sugars then get added at 48 to 72 hours into fermentation.

Click to expand...

Brewfun brings up a good point.  Yeasts produce enzymes to break down maltose into the simple sugars they can use.  When there is a lot of simple sugars already available to them in the wort when they are growing and multiplying, they tend to grow "lazy" with regard to producing those enzymes to utilize maltose and that can tend to stalled fermentation after all the simple sugars are exhausted. 

Additionally, as they multiply the yeast cells need the sterols, minerals such as Zinc, and protein building blocks from the wort to create healthy cell walls.  These are not available in simple sugars and a very rapid rate of growth due to the presence of so much food will exhaust the supply of these needed materials, resulting in weak cell walls and the inability to bud healthy daughter cells to replace aging yeast cells.

I typically add simple sugars to my Belgian ales after the wort has reached high krausen to prevent this from happening and have never had a stalled [knock on wood] fermentation when brewing these styles of beer.

Oginme said:

I would first check your hydrometer against distilled water to make sure the scale has not slipped.  At this point, it has been in the fermenter long enough that you shouldn't be seeing occasional bubbles unless the temperature is swinging and the beer is degassing due to that. 

What temperature are you fermenting at (the fermenter, not the room temperature)?  You may want to bump it into the mid-70's if you can to get the yeast to finish off. 

If it does not taste sweet at 1.040, I would put money on your hydrometer being off.

Click to expand...

I just checked the gravity again and, um, it went up. Now it's in the 1.05s. I'm lost.

I put the hydrometer in tap water and it was around 1.000, actually a little below, so if the paper slipped, it slipped down, not up.

It tastes sweet, I suppose, but not too sweet. I wanted this beer to be really malty though. But, yeah, it doesn't taste finished.

The airlock bubbles come about every 45 seconds now. To me, that means it's not really fermenting in any appreciable way, but there is still a ring of foam around the top with islands of bubbles and there is a steady, constant stream of tiny bubbles coming up the sides of the carboy all over adding to the foam.

Every time I dip the my plastic thief into the beer (I sanitize it, of course) it's so bubbly that it makes a huge rush of bubbles. I try to stir it around a bit to get some of the carbonation out. It's like the beer holds carbonation better than anything I've seen.

Sunday I siphoned out most of the yeast cake that had formed since I racked it a couple of weeks ago along with what beer came with it, put it in my Erlenmeyer on the stir plate, added a tbs of sugar and stirred it vigorously in air for about 6 hours, then poured it back into the carboy hoping that would wake the yeast up. Like everything I've done so far, it seems to have had not effect. I give up.

brewfun said:

A number of the Belgian strains are thought to be mutated wine yeasts. It can take temperatures as high as 90oF for them to dry out a beer.

Aeration and *sometimes* a bit of nutrient are also viable methods. Nutrient is a lot more effective at the start of fermentation because it helps build cell walls while budding. Later there is not much budding, so the impact is limited to replacing any nutrients that have been depleted or severely diluted by adjunct sugars.

A modern method is to create all malt wort and control temps for the first 24 hours. Then allow the temperature to free rise for the next 24 hours. The adjunct sugars then get added at 48 to 72 hours into fermentation.

Click to expand...

I added honey about 4 days after pitching yeast while fermentation looked like it had passed its peak activity but was still going strong, although it was never really that vigorous.

Also, before I added CBC-1 yeast, I tried to heat it with a carboy heater that I just happen to have and have never used. It sat at 85F for a day then when it didn't look like that helped, I upped it to 90F for a day. Nothing changed and I felt like I was ruining the beer, so I stopped. Again, none of that seemed to help.

I might just break down and add champagne yeast. I didn't want to do it because it would likely make the beer dry and I wanted it malty, but this simply can't go on like this. I pitched the yeast in December FFS.

Oginme said:

brewfun said:

A modern method is to create all malt wort and control temps for the first 24 hours. Then allow the temperature to free rise for the next 24 hours. The adjunct sugars then get added at 48 to 72 hours into fermentation.

Click to expand...

Brewfun brings up a good point.  Yeasts produce enzymes to break down maltose into the simple sugars they can use.  When there is a lot of simple sugars already available to them in the wort when they are growing and multiplying, they tend to grow "lazy" with regard to producing those enzymes to utilize maltose and that can tend to stalled fermentation after all the simple sugars are exhausted. 

Additionally, as they multiply the yeast cells need the sterols, minerals such as Zinc, and protein building blocks from the wort to create healthy cell walls.  These are not available in simple sugars and a very rapid rate of growth due to the presence of so much food will exhaust the supply of these needed materials, resulting in weak cell walls and the inability to bud healthy daughter cells to replace aging yeast cells.

I typically add simple sugars to my Belgian ales after the wort has reached high krausen to prevent this from happening and have never had a stalled [knock on wood] fermentation when brewing these styles of beer.

Click to expand...

I added honey to the fermenter 4 days after pitching and after "high krausen" had apparently passed. Honestly the krausen was never all that "high" to begin with.

Oginme said:

What temperature are you fermenting at (the fermenter, not the room temperature)?  You may want to bump it into the mid-70's if you can to get the yeast to finish off. 

Click to expand...

Missed this part earlier. The primary fermentation termperature has been about 72F this whole time because that's the range for WY1388. There have been times when it was more like 68F and it's been as high as 74F (except for when I heated it to 85F and 90F) but almost the entire time it's been somewhere around 72F.

Honey and mead can take a lot longer to ferment out. I tend to add my adjunct sugars just before or at flameout. You might give it as long as 9 or 12 months. Another option might be to add saison yeast, or if you are willing, Brettanomyces. Both will work harder to consume those sugars. I would make a starter if you want to go that route. I would also like to see what others think of this before you act on my thoughts - I haven't been in this situation and tried this myself. Personally, I would rather add a Brettanomyces than a wine yeast - and I don't imagine that it is high ABV that caused the stall.

Just as an additional note, I tend to use 3787 TRAPPIST STYLE HIGH GRAVITY, http://www.wyeastlab.com/yeast-strain/trappist-style-high-gravity. I am normal brewing Dubbel or Belgian Strong. You might give it a try next time.