Can yeast 'fall out' of the solution?

otron · 23-09-2011 01:14PM #1

I sampled my first brew for the first time last night and it seems my conditioning has gone very slowly, or failed entirely. The beer was sweet and flat.

I used Muntons Wheatbeer and Coopers Malt Extract. Original gravity was 1.046.

After 5 days in the primary fermenter (at a gravity of 1.017), I siphoned into secondary where it spent around 3 weeks. I kept waiting for the gravity to get lower but it never did, so I bottled 12 days ago with carbonation drops and the beer has probably been at an average temp of around 18c since then.

As I see it, there are two things that could be happening here
1) It's not been long enough since I bottled, given the temperature.
2) Because the brew spent so long in secondary, all the yeast sank to the bottom

Does this happen, or am I just being too impatient?

sharingan · 23-09-2011 04:44PM

Thats sounds like a pretty fast ferment to take 1.046 down to 1.017 in 5 days. I would have suspicions about the gravity readings.

When you primed your bottles, did you add sugar, or just carbonation drops? Does it taste sweet or really sweet? i.e. alcopop sweet

mayto · 23-09-2011 05:54PM

I find carb drops can take two to three weeks to fully carbonate. The beer would probably not go too much below 1017 so I would not worry about that. There should be enough yeast to carbonate the bottles. Primary fermentation could be done in 5 days. In future you might be better off leaving the beer for about 10 days to 2 weeks before bottling if finished fermenting or transfering to a secondary fermenter to allow beer to clear further.

otron · 23-09-2011 10:53PM

Thanks for the replies guys. I just re-read my post and realised that I left out the fact that the final gravity was 1.014-15 - so it continued fermenting a little in secondary...

What I'm worried about is whether the relatively long time in secondary somehow allowed the yeast to fall to the bottom, resulting in non-fermentation of the carbonation drops.

To answer sharingan's questions - it was only the drops that I used (sized for a 330ml bottle, but used in a 500ml bottle) and the sweetness is noticeable compared to commercial beers, but it's definitely not at alcopop levels.

Mayto - thanks for the encouraging words. I'm not sure what you mean by the following however, considering I did use a secondary:
"In future you might be better off leaving the beer for about 10 days to 2 weeks before bottling if finished fermenting or transfering to a secondary fermenter to allow beer to clear further."

mayto · 23-09-2011 11:36PM

otron wrote: »

Mayto - thanks for the encouraging words. I'm not sure what you mean by the following however, considering I did use a secondary:
"In future you might be better off leaving the beer for about 10 days to 2 weeks before bottling if finished fermenting or transfering to a secondary fermenter to allow beer to clear further."

As fermentation begins to slow/finish the yeast will continue to clean up the beer,so many say its better to leave the beer sit on the yeast for a few days after the fermentation finishes. Many kit instructions say to bottle too quickly really, when you should leave the beer for maybe ten days at least before bottling or racking to a second container if the beer is still very cloudy. I usually check the gravity after a week and if fermentation is complete I will bottle or keg a few days to a week later if the beer is pretty clear.

n97 mini · 27-09-2011 11:48AM

3 weeks in secondary will have dropped most of the yeast out. It will carbonate but it could take a while.

If it was my brew I would leave it for a month in a warm place and gently shake the bottles once a week.

n97 mini · 27-09-2011 11:48AM

sharingan wrote: »

Thats sounds like a pretty fast ferment to take 1.046 down to 1.017 in 5 days.

Depends on the yeast. I've had some go from 1.048 to 1.012 in two days.

Can yeast 'fall out' of the solution?

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