Stalling out

[LandoAllen]

How do you keep a big beer like a barley wine from stalling out?

 

[CityOChampBrew]

Start it with a healthy amount of yeast/proper size yeast starter, make sure you properly oxygenate it at the start and for the first couple of day, feed it nutrient, and don't mash too high... That should be a start.

 

[LandoAllen]

How do you make sure you have enough healthy yeast? I was taught to simply pitch the yeast straight onto the wart but I keep reading about making starters and I don't know much about them...

 

[buzbey]

Any beginner home brew book should have a chapter or section on yeast starters. basically it takes your yeast and grows it into more yeast "starting it" so its alive and ready to start eating your sugar when you pitch it. Anything above an og of 1.060 they suggest making a starter or you risk stressing your yeast out and creating off flavors.

 

[JonM]

Did you have trouble with a big beer stalling? If so, what was the recipe/process?

As others have noted, mash low for easily fermentable wort, make a big healthy starter, give pure O2 at pitching (and maybe even another dose at 15-18 hours after pitching) and nutrient.

Alternatively, you could just pitch the barleywine wort onto a yeast cake from a prior batch. That's what I did for my last barleywine.

 

[samwhois]

You could also pitch more tubes/smack packs/dry yeast packets to increase your yeast cell count. You should also choose a alcohol tolerant yeast. Most ferment up to 12% without too much problem. Big beers are tricky when starting out as a home brewer. Sometimes for a big beer I make a low gravity beer (1040) and the pitch the big beer on the yeast cake. Oxygen is key too. An aerator you attach to the end of your auto-siphon is a start. An aquarium pump with oxygen stone is the least expensive route but I would be afraid of contamination. With the aquarium pump it has to stay in the cooled wort for like 20 to 30 minutes to be effective. But my advise if you are unable to do a starter I would pitch a lot of yeast.

 

[DonLiguori]

Besides the starter and O2, you could also try to coax the yeast by doing wort additions to achieve the desired final alcohol content. Brew a medium-weight beer with all hop additions, then add in gradually over days/weeks additional, more concentrated worts to keep the yeast going while keeping the osmotic pressure in check.

 

[LandoAllen]

I just started a brew at 1.126 with a double the amount of yeast I normally use. I made a yeast starter and added plenty of nutrients to the wort. I am going to be step feeding more and more wort to the starter over the next few weeks and I'm hoping to get the brew down to an FG around 1.01 or less...

If it stalls out on me do any of you have any good advice on how to jumpstart it back up again?

 

[JonM]

Here ya go.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/psa-foolproof-stuck-ferment-fixer-72072/