What the heck?

[Jakeyboi]

hi everyone,

Something really strange has happened to my last brew. I brewed the old ale recipe from the bible at the beginning of the month.

I kept the recipe as in the book, I was suppose to get a OG of 1079 but got 1073 but an extra couple of litres.

I did change the yeast to danstar London Esb.

It was also the first brew where I used my tilt hydrometer and was able to keep tabs on the gravity without having to disturb it.

I have posted the log from the tilt, I had to do an overnight chill and you can see when I add the yeast, which gets to work and chews through the beer quickly. The reading at the top of the excel sheet is the newest. It then slows down and steadily drops a point or so a day and finally settles around the 1016/1017 mark on the 5th June. Expected gravity was 1014 so I left it be and nothing happened up to the 21st June. I was a little bit disappointed as the ABV was lower than it should be, and was away over the weekend and didn’t take any readings (you have to be within Bluetooth range of the tilt to take a reading).

Anyway went to keg it tonight and connected to the tilt, and was shocked to see 1002. I figured it must have become uncalibrated or something and kegged it, I also filled the hydrometer tube to double check, which confirmed a gravity of 1.002!!

The beer tastes great, but obv has a good boozy hit at a whopping 9.5%, it is intended for Xmas so I’m pretty happy with the outcome. It’s doesn’t even seem thin for 1.002?

But I’m scratching my head, it seems the yeast went to sleep for almost 3 weeks and then woke up super hungry. Has anyone ever had this? Should that yeast attenuate that much?

Makes you wonder about stalled brews, maybe they just need a few weeks to wake up, I would have kegged it last week at 1017 if I wasn’t so busy.

I’m interested to hear peoples thoughts.

Jake

 

[Jakeyboi]

Image quality is poor, re attempt

 

[An Ankoù]

Danstar London ESB: medium attenuation, doesn't metabolise maltotriose. Something's not quite right somewhere.
The beer tastes good, so it's not the beer.

 

[Richie_asg1]

Just trying to get my head around this and what was going on. I presume that when it stalled, most of the yeast had hit it's alcohol tolerance, or had run out of nutrients to keep itself going - so the yeast began to die off. I know that dead yeast hulls are a nutrient - so maybe this fed the small quantity of yeast that had a higher tolerance and let them work longer?
Just an idea to explain it because I can't figure it out, and am pretty new to this anyway.

 

[Jakeyboi]

Danstar London ESB: medium attenuation, doesn't metabolise maltotriose. Something's not quite right somewhere.
The beer tastes good, so it's not the beer.

It has to be the beer. I checked it with two hydrometers and got the same result.

 

[MyQul]

London ESB is supposed to be the Fullers strain, I think. The fullers strain has a tendency to over attenuate. I've havent read about this happening with London ESB though

I've had this happen to me with a wild yeast infection. Beer tasted fine but FG was near or at 1.000.However wild yeast tend to take a while to work and munch their way through the remaining sugars

I'm not sure if either of these explanations is the cause, just chucking some idea's out there