So I brewed a neipa that I've done before. Same recipe, 20# of grain, 8 oz of hops. The only difference was the use of imperial yeast's juice strain. Og 1.095 was supposed to finish at 1.020 but finished at 1.030. should I keg it up and cut the abv loss or give it time?
A lot more questions than your question presented. But a quick run of your numbers, you were shooting for 78% atten. but hit 67%. What temp did you mash at? How long of a ferment? What temp did you ferment at? In my experience, the Juice/1318 strain has been the best for NEIPA.
A 1.095 anything is going to require a metric shit-ton of 1318 or any yeast. How big a starter did you make and how fresh was the original?
FWIW I had a 1.094 that bottomed out at 1.014 in no less than 18 days after co-pitching one pack each Belle Saison and BE-134, no starter.
Mashed at 150 for 60 minutes and it's been fermenting for 3 weeks on Monday in the coldest room of the house (about 63 degrees). I used fast pitch for the starter one can plus another of water and let that chew on the imperial yeast on a stir plate for 2 days. The previous batch where I got the higher atten Used 1318. I expected better atten from the imperial yeast since they boast a 2 billion initial cell count. PS. Sorry for the ambiguous initial post the Homebrew was flowing last night. Cheers!
You you have a couple of things working against you: Imperial Juice publishes an attenuation range of 72 - 76, so 1.020 was a little optimistic. Recommended ferm temp is 64 - 74 . . . you being at 63 probably cost you a few points. Also, you are pushing an ABV level of 10%, making high attenuation more difficult. It's still possible you under-pitched . . . what was the date of the packet? The 2 billions cells could easily be 1 billion if it was an older packet (which I find retailers have no trouble pushing to their customers). To try and knock off a few points I would raise temp to mid-70s for a couple of days, then rack to keg and leave it in the mid-70s (a week?). The little yeasties have probably gone dormant, but increasing temp and a rousing might perk them up a little bit. Also suggest you look into any of the good online yeast-pitch calculators for the future.
I know you know, but for the benefit of future googlers, the boasted cell count would be 200 Billion (not 2 Billion).
So, you essentially started with a one liter starter. A beer that big would take a 2l starter using 200g dme and two 1318 if it was my beer. Plus oxygen. And some yeast nutrient. So I'm going with underpitched.
