Should I pitch more yeast...

[themdarnblues]

Hello all...

I am still new to the home brewing front and am thus still learning. What I have fermenting in my basement is a customized wheat beer kit. I finished the boiling with 1.75lbs of agave nectar and 1.75lbs of orange blossom honey. The OG was 1.058 for 4.5gal. After 11 days it is at 1.029 and has not changed since then. It has now been a touch over three weeks since brewing. The first few days was a vigorous ferment.

Right now it has a decent flavor but very sweet, which is to be expected given the amount of nectar and honey, but it seems to need a bit more fermenting. However, as noted above, it has stopped.

Should I pitch some more yeast?

Many thanks for your advice.

 

[jheld00]

Tell us more about your yeast was it dry yeast? If so did you direct pitch or rehydrate? Was white labs or wyeast? Did you direct pitch or did you make a starter? Also what temp are you fermenting at?

 

[themdarnblues]

Tell us more about your yeast was it dry yeast? If so did you direct pitch or rehydrate? Was white labs or wyeast? Did you direct pitch or did you make a starter? Also what temp are you fermenting at?

Many thanks for the reply. I did a direct pitch with Wyeast 1010, an American Wheat. It has been sitting at 66 degrees.

I can't help but think that with so much sugar that one package of yeast may not have been enough.

 

[BigFloyd]

At this point, it's kind of hard to say. You started off by underpitching somewhat and with a fair amount of "interesting" sugars other than malt. Some of those sugars may fully ferment, some might not. With different kinds of sugars in the mix, the yeast may have struggled to process some of them.

IMO, instead of pitching more yeast this late in the process run with what you've got and, since it's stable, bottle it. Next time you may want to even consider leaving out the extra stuff and brew some good old "Reinheitsgebot beer".

 

[TahoeRy]

I agree with big floyd, some of those sugars might not be completely fermentable and that could be what is causing the higher FG. It appears that agave nectar is fermentable and most honeys are as well so if the yeast was really healthy and properly pitched with O2 and nutrients it should of did the job a bit better. As also mentioned, you did under-pitch a bit and does not sound like you aerated so the yeast might of just been to stressed to finish the job. Adding more yeast will just give you a yeasty beer which really wont taste very good. Just rack it off the yeast and bottle it.

 

[themdarnblues]

Many thanks for the replies. Will bottle it later today and save it for warmer weather when it will be a welcome treat.

 

[Andrikos]

Hmmm, I think I disagree with the consensus here.
You only had a 50% apparent attenuation. That sounds really low to me.
The yeast should give you 74-78% attenuation so you're still quite aways from completion.

I do agree that you may have added "a few too many" simple sugars in there but there's nothing to do about it now unless you make a couple more gallons of "wheat beer wort" and pitch it to the fermenter with another vial of 1010 yeast. That's only if you have the fermentation room...

I'm afraid if you bottle that 1.029 beer you risk bottle bombs in your near future.
This is what I'd do:

1) Warm up the fermenter into the low/mid 70s. Shake up the fermenter to disperse the yeast.
if this doesn't work
2) Pitch a "simple sugar" yeast such as wine/cider/mead etc. and let it consume the simple sugars or better (and crazier) yet add more honey to 1.080-1.100 and turn it into a Braggot!
Good luck.

 

[Beernoulli]

There's also the possibility that the yeast are suffering from a lack of nutrients. Not sure what % of the fermentables the honey and agave were, but alone they offer very little nutrients. Along with bumping up the temp and agitating I would add some yeast nutrient. Bottling with such low attenuation sounds like a recipe for bottle bombs.