Stalled Fermentation Woes

I don't recall having a stalled fermentation before but unfortunately I ran into problems today when transferring my Festbier to a serving keg for lagering in preparation for September 17th, the official start of Oktoberfest...

Noooooooooo, not the Festbier!

I was using my Anvil bucket fermenter for this batch since I didn't have an open keg to ferment in, as I normally would. I went thru all the steps to get ready for a low oxygen transfer:

• Clean out the receiving keg

• Fill the keg with Star Sans to the very top and purge with CO2

• clean the transfer line and gas line

• Transfer the beer

• Take a gravity sample for FG

This is when I saw the current specific gravity reading at 1.044. It tasted fantastic but was way too sweet. However, I was encouraged by the malt character as this was the first time I did a step mash for protein, Beta and Alpha Saccrification.

Now the beer had been fermenting for more than 2 weeks so I was confident that it should be finished by now. So apparently the yeast stalled out. I used 34/70 Lager yeast, which has always been a predictable workhorse for me over the course of many batches. I've never had any issues with this yeast. So what happened?

Then I remembered..... When I picked out the yeast at the HomeBrew shop, I recall grabbing 2 packets of the Usual Pink 34/70 SafLager packets. But I also saw other packets of a German Lager yeast that was half the price and still had a good use-by date so it seemed fresh. I wish I could remember the brand name but I cannot. I think it was a brown label and it was a dry yeast packet. I will say I've never heard of this yeast brand but the description said it was the famous WeihenStephaner German Lager yeast strain, which I know as 34/70. So I bought 2 packets of the cheap stuff, not thinking it would matter at all.

Fermentation seemed to be chugging along at 50F then 62F for a diacetyl rest but I never took a gravity reading because I don't like taking any chances with O2 ingress. Once I transferred over to the keg, it was easy to grab a gravity sample. I guess I will need to re-pitch, since it was still at 1.044.

So, at that point I decided to lower the temp down to 62F, pitch about half a packet of the real 34/70 yeast, add a spunding valve and hopefully finish out the fermentation.

Of course this will delay the lagering phase a bit and I'm not sure if the beer will clear. Bummer but stay calm and have a homebrew!

More coming.....

As a side note, I will say transferring to a serving keg is a big hassle compared to my usual method of serving right off the yeast in the fermenting keg and I'm quite sure some O2 got into the keg after all was said and done today. Luckily, re-starting fermentation should eliminate any O2 that did make it into the final serving keg, so we'll see what happens...

Update - 9/7/22: Gravity is down to 1.014 so I decided to call it good and cold crash. Still tastes really nice but there is a whole bunch of sediment and turbidity. Hopefully it will clear up.

Update - 10/12/22: Never really did clear up or clean up. Flavors still muddled and not crisp or clean at all. Sadly, I ended up dumping the batch...