#F@#$# Extract!

[biertourist]

I was trying to get a quick brew in before my first child gets here so I decided to brew an extract brew.
(I literally brewed 3 extract brews before moving to all grain and only one involve liquid extract)

I was going for something amber-ish but they wanted me to use like 1/3 of a can of Munich extract which seemed super wasteful so I used 2 cans of golden light and one can of Munich; gravity ended up around 1.077 and after 1 1/2 weeks of fermentation it's only down to 1.044.

Horrifically unfermentable extract and the beer ended up WAY darker than it was supposed to AND stupid extract is REALLY expensive.

My yeast was REALLY old (June) and despite propogating it up on a stir plate with 2 consecutive starters I think I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY underpitched because most of the yeast was just dead.  I've been tryign to avoid pitchign a second strain because the primary strain was Conan that I was hoping to harvest but I think I'm just going to have to cut my losses.  -I don't really want to throw good money after bad and I'm secretly afraid that I just have really unfermentable extract and it's not going to budge below 1.040.

It's kind of hard to get an idea for a hop when you've got 40 points of sugar hiding all the flavor.

I'm afraid this is probably going to get dumped; if so I'm definitely swearing off extract.  So expensive, so sticky messy and no control over the fermentability or color.... Very frustrating.


Adam

[Greg2013]

Just pitch US05 m8, don't see the issue here? If you are dumping it anyway why not just repitch ?

[Ciderhead]

+1 rather than sling.

[Will_D]

Another suggestion as well as repitching is to dilute it with plain bolied water or whatever.

Use beer smith dilution calculator!

That will reduce the gravity (and the malt flavours) - the hops may become a bit washed out so dry hop a bit or just boil up a weak hop tea for dilution! I know ye can't trust Seattle tap water!

[biertourist]

I'll repitch some US 05 (my local shop is insanely expensive for yeast, but this is for science now!).

If that doesn't work, I was considering dilluting it as an option, too; I've only dumped one beer and that was because of yeast autolysis; I'd prefer not to have to dump a second one.



Adam

[Hop Bomb]

Few people on here saying conan is slow to ferment. Thats probably the issue. Barkars IPA fermented out pretty quick though & cleared very well too. So two sides to every story I guess.

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

If you *really* want to hang onto that Conan yeast, draw off a sample from the beer and build up another starter. If you need malt, get malt from wherever, drawing off a litre from the main beer and diluting would probably work. Then repitch the starter pack into the beer you drew it from.

[ColMack]

My Conan IPA took three weeks to get down to 1.014 from 1.064.
I was sure the yeast was dodgy.
Patience might help?

[irish_goat]

so sticky messy and no control over the fermentability or color.... Very frustrating.Adam

Buy extra light DME next time, a lot easier to use than liquid and you can then use speciality malts to achieve the colour you want.

Take another reading today and see what it says.

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Is there a link that describes this Conan yeast?

If it is this sluggish to attenuate, I would like to know why it is so worth it.

Are there any professional breweries that use it?

[irish_goat]

Is there a link that describes this Conan yeast?

If it is this sluggish to attenuate, I would like to know why it is so worth it.

Are there any professional breweries that use it?

Big thread here. http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.com/forum/index.php/topic,3526.0.html

Used in Heady Topper IPA.