So I brewed a RIS back in early December. Built up a yeast starter twice with WLP-001 california ale, so needless to say the yeast tore through this one, no problem. Left it in primary for 1 month, and went ahead and bottled it from there. Gravity was down where I wanted it. At bottling, I added cold-steeped coffee, and 3.7 oz of brown sugar to prime. Only 2 weeks after bottling, it's already got a thin, tan head on it, and it's carbed up almost perfectly. This is a good thing, but I'm concerned that it's not finished carbing up... as I hear RIS's can take upwards of a few months to fully carb. OG was around 1.085. FG was around 1.025, so this thing was finished fermenting. I guess my only other option is to go ahead and just put them all in the fridge to slow down the yeast activity. I guess the reason I'm posting, is to see if anyone else has ever had a RIS carb up so quick? Most of the time I hear stories of them taking forever to carb. This was my first time using brown sugar at bottling, so maybe the yeast ate up the brown sugar quicker than your normal corn sugar... thoughts?
That's a relatively low OG RIS. Most of the slow carbing ones are of a higher OG, (so higher alcohol) or have been aging for a bit longer than yours. I wouldn't be concerned at all.
Cool, yea I was hoping that was the case. It had been sitting on a massive 6 in. yeast cake for a month so it got down relatively low. I guess another reason I was concerned was because I used cold steeped coffee, and the coffee grounds weren't sanitized. Just hoping a bug from the grounds isn't munching at those unfermentable sugars, but I hear that can take months to happen.
The yeast will eat the brown sugar slower than corn sugar because it contains molasses. Your beer carbed in 2 weeks because you pitched plenty of yeast and there was an abundance of healthy yeast to carb the bottles. I'll bet your bottles aren't quite done carbing and will be completely done in one more week. 2-3 weeks is a normal amount of time for bottle carbing. If it takes longer than that, yeast should have been added at bottling due to high ABV, long storage or an underpitched primary.
Thanks. I guess I was just concerned because of the 30+ beers I've brewed, this one surprisingly carbed up the fastest. Just seeing if anyone else has had quick fermentation in the bottle (2-3 weeks), without it getting overly carbed in 1-2 months.
