Belgian Tripel Fermentation

I have a Belgian Tripel fermenting that I brewed on Sunday.  I’m tracking it’s progress with a TILT, and I’m wondering if it’s starting to stall out.  It’s been at 1.041 for about a 1/2 day now.  Started it out at 64 and have moved it to 70 over the past few days.  It’s been a while since I brewed a beer like this.  Pitched a decanted 3L starter with two packs of White Labs yeast (Abbey Yeast).

Should I have any reason to worry?  Still hearing some bubbles out of the fermenter.

In BLAM, Stan said that the last 10% of a  elgian yeast fermentation can take as long as the first 90%.  It hasn’t even been a week yet.  Relax.

I would not worry. It’s only been a few days and it sounds like fermentation is off to a good start. If it has been a week and you’re still at 1.041 then I would be concerned. Fermentation is an organic process it is not a perfect straight line from OG to FG.

I don’t have a Tilt but from what I understand of the mechanism, if there’s krausen stuck on it you could get a false reading. I’d at least double-check with a hydrometer before taking any action.

[emoji106]  I can validate that statement.

I thought this same thing.  Gave it a good shake this morning hoping that helps, but so far it hasn’t moved in the last 24 hours.  I’ll take a reading Monday or Tuesday and then figure out what’s next.

How was the activity in your starter? Did it look healthy? Which yeast was it exactly?

So, it’s been three weeks since brew day.  Checked the gravity today and it was 1.016.  A couple of questions:

  1. Seems to still be a little bit of activity, but do you think this beer will make it to 1.009 (targeted FG)?
  2. At what point should I consider repitching more yeast?  In the past when a beer stalled out, I had very little luck in getting it to ferment out with Champaign yeast

If this gets stuck here, I’d probably dump instead of keeping this around as there is nothing worse than an under attenuated Belgian beer.

Thoughts?

I didn’t ever see your OG or your recipe, but if you had this yeast seem to stall out early in fermentation it’s not terribly surprising to see the whole process take longer than planned.  Have you thought about adding a bit of light belgian candi syrup?  The yeast that are still active will gobble it up and might help accelerate the process of fermenting more of the wort sugars, driving your FG down closer to your target.  In addition I’d have the temp at the very top of the range for your yeast strain

OG was 1.081
WLP530, which lists a range of 66-72.  I started off at 64 for the first 6 days, then ramped it up to 70.  I was considering going slightly above the range at this point to see if that would help.

Early question was about the starter.  The starter was very healthy.  I cold crashed the starter, decanted, and pitched.

I’m willing to wait if that’s the answer, but also want to brew another beer for a fishing trip next month.  May have to pull this one from my fermentation chamber at just let it finish (if it will) at ambient temps in my basement (mid to upper 60’s now).

It may be done.  What was your recipe?

Recipe:
10 gallon batch

85% Belgian Pils
14% Cane Sugar (added at end of Boil)
1 % Aromatic Malt

3L starter with 2 packs of WLP 530
Beersmith OG: 1.084 (hit 1.081)
Beersmith FG: 1.008

Step Mash:
10 min @ 131
90 min @ 149
30 min @ 155
Mash Out @ 168
(Yeah, I know what more complicated than needed, but I wanted to try it to see if it made any difference)

On another note, it’s still bubbling so maybe I’m just impatient.

No red flags in the recipe.  And while I might expect it to finish lower, I never take software FG estimates at face value

Agreed. If you haven’t brewed this recipe before, all that happened is you just learned the actual FG.

1.081 to 1.016 is 79% attenuation…can’t complain about that.  Sounds like it’s probably done, but no harm letting it condition a bit longer in your basement while you use your chamber for your next batch.

For me, the key to tripel is not a high OG but a low FG.  A 1.072 OG that finished around 1.006 or less gives you the alcohol along with the dryness

Would you go along with adding a bit of sugar and warming it up to the mid 70’s to try and dry it out a bit?

That’s not really going to do what you think. The yeast will (hopefully) eat the simple sugar you add, but it probably isn’t going to ferment much more of  the maltose and dextrins from the wort. You may see a small decrease in FG, but that would just be from the higher alcohol content rather than lower residual sugar. There isn’t much you can do to get a beer to ferment further once the yeast has finished.

And besides, your taste buds determine how much you enjoy your beer, not your hydrometer. I bet it tastes plenty good even at 1.016

Thanks for all the advice.  It did taste good when I pulled a sample for a hydrometer reading the other day.  It seems a little on the sweet side, but I think I’ll go with it.

Why I stopped thinking about attenuation lately while building recipes, I don’t know.  That’s what I’m kicking myself for here.  I like Belgians to be on the drier side, and unfortunately this beer might not give me what I want.  I wished I would have had the advice to back off the OG to make sure I got to an FG that I think I like in my Belgian beers.

THIS^^^^^  I think you’re better off just leaving it.  I’ve ruined beers by trying to “save” them.