I need Yeast advice for Stuck Barleywine

[spiderwrangler]

They know how many cells they need to do the job

UGH. The scientist side of me if disgusted by this...

[Ozwald]

They know how many cells they need to do the job

UGH. The scientist side of me if disgusted by this...

Short hand. Sue me. It gets the point across until some asshat reads too far into it Besides, those yeasties know a lot. I saw one of my colonies setting up their own library & what appeared to be a community college. I didn't have any immersion oil on hand to read the dedication plaque though. The ground breaking ceremony was rather moving.

[brewinhard]

They know how many cells they need to do the job

UGH. The scientist side of me if disgusted by this...

Short hand. Sue me. It gets the point across until some asshat reads too far into it Besides, those yeasties know a lot. I saw one of my colonies setting up their own library & what appeared to be a community college. I didn't have any immersion oil on hand to read the dedication plaque though. The ground breaking ceremony was rather moving.

Wish I could've been there for the innaugural toast! I do think some yeast might actually be smarter than some of my science students I currently teach....

[BDawg]

They know how many cells they need to do the job

UGH. The scientist side of me if disgusted by this...

Short hand. Sue me. It gets the point across until some asshat reads too far into it Besides, those yeasties know a lot. I saw one of my colonies setting up their own library & what appeared to be a community college. I didn't have any immersion oil on hand to read the dedication plaque though. The ground breaking ceremony was rather moving.

[BeaverBarber]

In this case, the yeast will consume available nutrients & reproduce. They know how many cells they need to do the job & will attempt to balance themselves accordingly. The extra O2 introduced to them during this phase help this chemical process. When they shift gears & move on to the next job, adding more O2 isn't going to be helpful at all. The yeast aren't going to back up & start searching for more nutrients, they're going to continue on with their job. O2 is detrimental at this point, regardless what beer style or gravity we're talking about. Provided most brewers attempting their first big beer don't pitch enough volume, high enough viability or cells appropriately fed & grown with a starter. All these little setbacks add up & a little extra O2 can help, but by no means is it the solution - pitching correctly in the first place is. And with that correct pitch the O2 needs of the yeast are going to be similar to any other brew scaled appropriately.

This is interesting. I was wondering about this, but I'm a little too busy to read textbooks about this. I thought that yeast can only grow until they've either run out of nutrients or until they've completely saturated the solution...there has to be a saturation point, right? Maybe not. Due to those limiting factors, I figured that the number of yeast cells in in a 1.040 gravity wort would be the same as it would be in a 1.070 gravity wort. I didn't realize that they'll grow more in numbers if they're going to brew a higher gravity ale. In addition to a little extra oxygen during the lag phase, is it also helpful to put in extra nutrient?

[BrewerBC]

Please keep us updated. I'd love to know how much more fermentation you get out of this batch. Right now I'm praying for beer and expecting bread. But seriously, if it does come way down, it would be interesting to know how you did it because that's unusual.

Just wanted to update ya'll. It has been two weeks since I pitched the second starter, and I am happy to say the gravity has dropped to 1.034
It looks like I won't be making bread after all.
Cheers!

[brewinhard]

Well done! Glad that you perservered through this one and came out with an acceptable beverage. Sometimes homebrewing involves some "game time" decisions that can work in your favor. Congrats! Now get to work and brew up another one with the new knowledge you learned from this...

[BeaverBarber]

Thanks for sharing. Sounds like it's a great beer now...definitely not bread. Congrats!