Not sure i pitched enough yeast

A lot more info is needed

 

Hrmm.. Whats the gravity of the wort/beer now?

I'd check that before you move forward, and like I said before, while you needed a big starter, do a 1 L, and let it ride, crash, decant, and step up to a 2L on the cake in the flask for your 2 L starter instead of jumping to 2L. Might help a bit.

I bet you are fine though. It's Belgian, it cane be fermented warmer, and it can be underpitched to a degree for certain strains to really manipulate the ester and phenol profile.

 

I am going to address the og issue here. If the recipe was for 5 gallons and you were at 6.5 gallons of wort I am going to say yeah, you oversparged and wound up diluting your wort. If you have beersmith or another calculator punch the numbers in for a 5 gallon batch and then change ikt to a 6.5 gallon batch. You'll bepretty close to your expected og. Next time figure a boil off of 1 gallon an hour to get close and go from there. I live at altitude (6500 ft) and have a boil off of 1.5 gallons an hour. All my boils start at 7 gallons so I can have 5.5 in the fermentor. But now I am rambling.

 

Likewise, I'm much lower than you, but I know for a typical batch I do, 5.5 in the fermenter to yield 5 in the keg, makes me get around 7.5g pre boil for a 60-90 min boil generally.

 

64 IG meas/86 goal = 0.74 5G /~7G = 0.71 so you can see how the IG dropped. Yea over sparged a bit is a possibility.

As for the yeast I would let it run. We do not know your mash temp. either. I recently did an AG (newbie too, 3rd batch AG) and think I mashed too high a temp, so pulled the wort out of fermenters and ran it through mash again with ~3# of grain to get enzymes working on breaking up sugar. Also then reheated the wort to make sure sanitary so was a long day. Now both are fine (pitched 2 different yeasts doing a parti gyle). So have ~ 2 3G size ferments going, one may bottle any day now as that was 2nd runnings.

 

Also, good info to share would be: what yeast did you use? WL or Wyeast? Date of yeast manufacture? Ferm temps?

 

BigJoeC had (I think) at least two other threads on this beer. Both talked about the yeast issue.

IMO, he underpitched, although someone told him that since he saw 'a rather large yeast cake at the bottom' that his yeast starter was 'OK.' Gotta love that kind of precision. Perhaps the advisor will now go to BigJoeC's house and fix the problem.

BigJoeC: at this point, if you're not at or close to your expected terminal gravity, and you have this wort/beer sitting at a temperature near the yeast strain's high end, I'd probably pitch more yeast. And then I'd listen to Mr. Malty next time.

 

Good call. Now that I'm more awake, I should have added... your beer may be fine. I shouldn't have jumped the gun on the pitch rate lecture. I mean, I still think this beer was underpitched, and if the beer turns out to have any of the issues normally associated with underpitching, that's where I'd look first. But it's not a foregone conclusion that this beer will have problems.

 

Here are some common issues...
- high esters
- high fusel alcohols
- under-attenuation
- high diacetyl
- high sulfur compounds (particularly in lagers)
- high acetaldehyde

Most of these issues (if you indeed have them) could possibly be helped by pitching more yeast now. Esters are probably an exception though. The initial fermentation conditions are most of what influences eventual ester content, and esters are a result of a pretty complicated pathway. In fact, if you're successful at reducing existing fusels, your esters will actually increase.

 

I would pitch a rehydrated pack of SAF -T58 to finish fermentation, and I wouldn´t worry too much because aging this beer a little longer will cure off flavors, finally is a belgian beer.

 

don't overthink it... how do you KNOW your fermenation isn't roaring? Airlock activity is a POOR indicator of fermentation quality.....

RDWHAHB (relax, don't worry, have a homebrew) and give it a few more weeks to do its thing. Changing something at this point is just guessing, unless gravity readings show a stuck fermentation.

Pitching ANYTHING, including yeast, just increases your chance of infection on a beer that may very well be perfect just as it is.

 

I insist, rehydrated SAF T-58 yeast dissolved in boiled water will not add any risk of infection and this way you will complete your fermentation to reach your FG.

 

If your gravity is stable by now (and I suspect it is, but measure in a couple days anyway), I'd probably bottle after a total primary time of about 4 weeks. I don't see any reason to secondary.

By undershooting your expected OG, I think you actually made this more dubbel-like than the original recipe. Some aromatic and/or Munich malt would have been typical, and roasted barley is maybe not, but there's more than one way to skin a cat, and I've had many commercial dubbels that are anything but clones of each other.

 

Not to be argumentative, but just OPENING the fermenter introduces risk.... Such LITTLE time has gone by, and with a current reading of 1.010, there is no real benefit in repitching yeast

 

You got right but at the time I have posted my last post I didn´t know his beer had a 1010 FG, he posted it after my post.
I am not afraid to open my fermenters, actually I do it very often and have no issues