I'm having some problems with a couple of washes that I recently made. I've been using the tomato paste/sugar wash recipe from this forum quite succesfully, so recently decided to do a back to back fermentation and run of both a sugar wash and a dextrose wash (I know this has been done to death before, but I love this hobby and thought I'd start exploring for myself
) The problem I've got is that my washes seem to be taking forever to finish and im wondering if I should be doing/adding anything to them? I started the sugarwash too high I reckon.....starting SG of 1.120 whereas I normally start them at 1.080. So that might be part of the problem with that wash. However, I started the dextrose at 1.095, which I thought was within the reasonable limits of Dextrose pitched with bakers yeast? The sugarwash is 28 litres and the dextrose is 25 litres. Both were strong starters with plenty of foam within an hour of being mixed. I used identical ingredients to those that I have used for my previous 5 succesful ferments/runs. Both washes were made 8 weeks ago and at 4 weeks they were SW @ 1.065 and DW @ 1.040. Now, another 4 weeks along they are SW @ 1.050 and DW @ 1.019. Both washes are still bubbling, but very slowly. They also appear to have already started clearing?It is worth noting that the weather has gone cold down here in South Oz now (about 14 - 17 degrees celsius most days) and that my washes usually ferment fully within 8 days during our warmer summer weather. I've recently wrapped both of my fermenters in a blanket, so at least they look toasty warm!
Any comments or ideas are welcome. Although everything else I've tried so far has been succesful, im still a total novice, so throw anything at me and I promse I won't be hurt! Thanks in advance for your help.
Cheers, Cam