Long, slow ferment - US-05 under 18 degrees C

[bruce_the_loon]

Just finally hit stability on a light bodied BIAB amber ale using US-05. Been extremely cold weather (for us that is) and the Tilt temp hasn't been above 19 degrees C, averaging about 17 or so. Took over a month to ferment. No, I don't have a fermentation chamber, yet. First image is the full ferment from the Tilt, second is the last 7 days.

Does this feel normal for US-05 in these temp ranges, previously the gravity bottomed out after a week to ten days with a much steeper decline in the swing phase, but in warmer conditions (21-24 degrees C) This one seems to have caught lockdown malaise and gone on a go-slow.

 

[VikeMan]

The "chico" strains can work fine at low temps, but are definitely slower there. I'm curious about your gravities though. It looks like you got a very high attenuation, given the yeast strain and style.

 

[bruce_the_loon]

The "chico" strains can work fine at low temps, but are definitely slower there. I'm curious about your gravities though. It looks like you got a very high attenuation, given the yeast strain and style.

Once I bottle, I'll do a proper hydrometer test. Those are the raw numbers from the Tilt unit and I haven't actually calibrated it in known gravity solutions. The hydrometer OG came in at 1.047, but the Tilt stabilized at 1.039 at 21 degrees C, so I suspect it is underreading. I don't use the Tilt numbers for my calcs, just to see when the ferment has leveled out.

 

[eric19312]

Did you dry hop on our about 8/25 or 8/26? Looks like you were done and then after a bit of delay got another degree of actual attenuation. That could be hop creep.

Looks like you might benefit from a warming belt. US-05 gets sleepy with declining temperatures. On 8/19 you hit temperature I use to soft crash the yeast. I know with big pitches people have successfully fermented with this yeast at lower temperatures, Safale used to have a recipe for doing so on their site, but thats with steady temp control at that temp not dropping from about 19 to about 13 like you did from 8/11 to 8/19. The good thing is the beer warmed back up during following week and that gentle ramp up would of been welcome by whatever yeast were left to go ahead and wrap up fermentation and clean up.

Curious how the beer comes out especially from yeast ester perspective.

 

[bruce_the_loon]

Did you dry hop on our about 8/25 or 8/26? Looks like you were done and then after a bit of delay got another degree of actual attenuation. That could be hop creep.

Looks like you might benefit from a warming belt. US-05 gets sleepy with declining temperatures. On 8/19 you hit temperature I use to soft crash the yeast. I know with big pitches people have successfully fermented with this yeast at lower temperatures, Safale used to have a recipe for doing so on their site, but thats with steady temp control at that temp not dropping from about 19 to about 13 like you did from 8/11 to 8/19. The good thing is the beer warmed back up during following week and that gentle ramp up would of been welcome by whatever yeast were left to go ahead and wrap up fermentation and clean up.

Curious how the beer comes out especially from yeast ester perspective.

Nope, no dry hopping on this one. The upwards jump on the 24th/25th was a well-sanitized cleaning of the Tilt as I wanted to check the 1.000 calibration point in water. If I remove the 0.002 points gained around that time, the stepdown pattern looks continuous.

There is an insulated fermenting chamber under construction with heating and chilling being adapted from a water cooler unit. The houses in South Africa are designed to be cool in the hot summers and we don't have central heating, so when this cold spell hit, it hit the house hard and dragged the temps down. Probably should have wrapped a duvet or something around the fermenter, but they were occupied.

I'll report back on flavours and measured FG as soon as I can.

 

[bruce_the_loon]

Finally an update on this one. Beer tastes brilliant, no souring or off-tastes, at least to my taste buds. Final gravity came out at 1.007 with my glass hydrometer.