Brewed an IPA on Sunday that had an OG of 1.070 and when I took the first hydrometer reading yesterday it had gone down to 1.008. Im a bit worried as this is more fermentation than I'd planned for so im wondering if I should intervene?! :(
Is this all-grain or extract? What yeast did you use?
What temp did you mash at?
It would have been around 65-67 degrees celcius
Looking at the recipe 1.070 looks way too high for the amount of grain - maybe a false OG reading, S-04 is a monster and could take a 1.055-1.060 beer down that low
True that, I was using Nottingham danstar and it took off straight away. There's a fairly strong alcohol taste off it at the moment so im worried it'll eliminate any maltyness
Did you oxygenate?
What temp did you ferment at?
What Temp control?
Don't want to alarm you but any chance you got a secondary infection from a wild yeast or bacteria ? :(
I hope thats not the case, cant see how it would be. Been fermenting at 18-20 degrees with a brew belt for control
8.2%, don't put that into coopers bottles they will melt.
Are you using beersmith?
Not a lot you can do apart from water it down which will make it thin:(
Anybody do anything with a monster like this before? I thinking full bodied low gravity and blending.
I generally tend to shoot 3 legged horses.
I think for health and safety sake you better send it to myself and CH for extensive testing :P
Couple of suggestions:
If you have a refractometer, or can get a lend of one measure the FG with it and use beersmith / online software to work back from the two FG measurements to an OG measurement.
Maybe, also work back your OG from your FG using your efficiency on previous brews and typical attenuation rates for S-04 and see how that looks relative to what your measured OG is.
Sometimes OG measurements can be off, even way off - if the wort was hot, or the sugars weren't evenly distributed through it.
If you've a problem with hot alcohol flavours because it genuinely is too strong give it a bit of time to mellow out. I did a Belgian DIPA that went from 1075 to 1004 (fiercesome Belgian yeast and a lot of sugar). It was pretty hot tasting for awhile but a month's cold storage mellowed it out a lot.
Rough estimate - 5.5kg of Pale and .45kg of crystal is 1758 gravity points
If your post boil volume was 20l and efficiency was 65% that's OG = 1057
If your post boil volume was 22l and efficiency was 65% that's OG = 1051
If your post boil volume was 20l and efficiency was 75% that's OG = 1066 - to get 1070 in 20l you'd need 80% efficiency
If your post boil volume was 22l and efficiency was 75% that's OG = 1060 - to get 1070 in 22l you'd need 88% efficiency
Either way your yeast attenuation would be 83%+
I'd check the hydrometer isn't playing up.
Thanks fall the advice guys :) reduced the temp by 3 degrees last night and tasted it again today. Same hydrometer reading but the taste was mellower and more rounded.
Just looking back on the first post, it's going to take 6 - 8 weeks for that beer to hit it's stride so I wouldn't read too much into what it tastes like now, unless it's nasty sour or cooked vegetable sulphur stuff going on - even then I'd still wait, I mean what have you got to lose?
Patience, as an ingredient!
Who'd have thought?!
Patience and calibration.