Northeast Pales/IPA/DIPA

I used TheYeastBay Vermont Ale, I held temp at 70F for 12 hours, then lowered it to 64F for 10 days.
OG was 1.062 FG is stuck at 1.028, supposed to finish at 1.013.
Is the vermont ale yeast just a slow moving yeast? I know 64 +/-1 is on the low end for the yeast. I'm still figuring out my fermentation chamber, but I've wanted to see flavors with on the low end.
I really should have ramped the temp to 70F for the last couple days before cold crashing. I was really busy and impatient.
Anyone had similar things happen with Conan/Vermont Ale yeast?

 

I have a chocolate butternut squash porter on now with 1318. Brought a growler of the non-weird half of the batch to a homebrew club meeting on Sunday and got positive reviews. Body was nice, although the flaked rye certainly didn't hurt. I didn't find it to be particularly remarkable. I think the success of the Tree House dark beers is largely thanks to grain formulation.

 

Thanks! I like to reuse my yeast and since I only brew 1 - 2 times a month I try to get a few pitches off the same yeast and plan beers around what yeast I buy. Thus, if I finally get 1318 I wasn't sure if I would be best avised to only brew IPAs with it.

 

It's an English strain, so it is pretty versatile. Try to end with the hoppier beers if you can.

 

I was revisiting some of the earlier discussions in this thread and came across this post on the Craft Beer Cellar blog that I thought did a really nice job in capturing the opinions of different brewers when it comes to the haze issue. The whole thing is worth reading, but here are a couple of key quotes from JC Tetreault that seemed relevant to this thread:

 

@purephase, thanks for that post.

JC Tetreault mentioned:

“Combine high hopping rates, hops with very high oil content and our house yeast/processes…you get unprecedented levels of haze.”

Needless to say but a number of BA homebrewers would like more details:

· What is the Trillium house yeast strain

· What part of the Trillium brewing process expedites the formation of haze (e.g., do they dry hop at cold temperatures?)

Cheers!

 

The byo clone for fppa notes wlp007/wy1098. They've listed dry hopping rates that are quite massive 7.5oz/5gal in some cases. I think a lot of the trick, apart from getting some if not all the dry hops in prior to the end of fermentation, is somehow getting the hop character to scale up as the dry hop amounts are increased. I can't say I've figured it out as 7 oz of mosaic DH doesn't seem to be much more potent in my bucket than say ~ 4oz. I sure as hell wish otherwise, so I'll keep trying.

 

Dave Green (@telejunkie) discussed this topic in his article on Advanced Dry Hopping Techniques:

“But keep in mind that sometimes, more isn't always better. In my freshman year microeconomics course I learned about a basic principle, the law of diminishing returns. In the terms of dry hopping, the more you add, the less net gain you add with each additional increment. In fact you may find that you are detracting from a certain nuanced characteristic of the beer if you overwhelm it with another characteristic.”

https://byo.com/stories/issue/item/3187-advanced-dry-hopping-techniques

Cheers!

 

You're supposed to start with a low temp and then raise it, not the other way around.

 

According to theyeastbay directions it says to hold at 70F for a 5-15 hours.
http://www.theyeastbay.com/brewers-yeast-products/vermont-ale
Which I had never seen this before, but I went with it.

 

From that link "In order to achieve high attenuation, we recommend fermenting at 64-68 ºF for 5-7 days, and then raising the temperature to 70 ºF until a stable gravity is reached."

I would raise the temperature back up to the 68-70 range.

 

That's a crutch and I'm surprised to see The Yeast Bay recommending it. It's similar to recommendations I've seen from another yeast manufacturer to start lager fermentations at ale yeast temperatures, and then drop. Sure, it will get fermentation started faster, but it could defeat the purpose of temperature control in the first place. Do you hold the higher temp for 5 hours? Or 15 hours? Take a guess? Yeast don't follow our clocks and calendars.

 

I will definitely do this next time.

Completely agree especially after what it did during this fermentation. Honestly I would have just done my normal ale profile except I decided to read the directions this time.

 

I'm going to make my first attempt at this "style" this weekend with London III and was thinking about this grain bill: 78% Pale, 13% flaked oats, 7% wheat and a bit of acidulated. I've done IPA's with 2row/wheat and 2row/oats but never the three together. Is there any reason I should not combine the three? Will be using magnum to bitter and a blend of citra/mosaic/amarillo in late/FO/whirlpool additions.

 

It'll be fine with the three.

 

13% flaked oats seems high to me...would think you'll end up overly "oat-ey" with that percentage. I would cut that in half personally. Otherwise seems great to me. I'll usually toss in the some natural brown sugar and sometimes a small % caramalt, but those definitely aren't necessary.

 

I like that grain bill. I have used a similar grain bill for sour beers. Helps add body to sours and will work out great with london 3. Recently did briess pale and 18% flaked oats with Trois yeast. Looking forward to kegging it in a week or so.

 

I agree, I feel a small amount of cara/crystal really helps things shine and adds to body/taste

 

Based on the NE IPA brewed by @Coff and described here and elsewhere on his blog, I went with 15% flaked oats in my first attempt at this style. The beer is quite young, but I do not think it is over oatey. Of course, one's mileage can vary.

Cheers!

 

I took this beer to a local home brew fest style competition and it took second overall. It's definitely hazy, but not murky looking like some of the others posted. It's easily the best beer that I've ever brewed and I'll be sticking with the base and playing with the hops in future batches. I'll post a pic later.