i would aerate and pitch a starter bottle with ec1118 your if your pa wasnt too high i always use ec1118 and a starter bottle for sugar washes and i stone aerate for one hour but i dont think that was your problem-- the final work is done without oxygen

So I stressed my little alcohol makers?...OK I can re-pitch..I have some distillers yeast I'll use. I dint use them this wash because it wasn't a true grain wash and I've read that if you use it in a sugar (mainly) wash you'd get the off flavor's. I think a good test will be to take some of the wash and use that as a starter and see if it takes off..if it does then there will be enough sugars in the wash and the yeast will finish the ferment...does that sound plausible?

"Hi chooch,


Did you measure the pH of your wash? It's possible that it's too acidic. The teaspoon of gypsum will add around 50 ppm calcium for the volume of water you're using but it will also lower the pH. The calcium is useful to the yeast provided it doesn't get too high. You may not actually need it if you're water is hard enough to begin with.

The citric acid will lower the pH even more. You need to be real careful with the citric acid since it can drop your pH a lot more than you might expect.

Baker's yeast should be able to handle the wash you describe just fine. I've used it many times with an OG of 1.080 and didn't have any trouble.

Try making a starter and repitch as scotty suggests. Perhaps put 2 - 3 quarts of your wash in a gallon jug and dillute it with water by 20% or so. Then add a small starter to see if it will kick off. If it does, you can dillute what's in your fermenter and just add your test jug.

Keep working the problem before you declare defeat. I've dumped several attempts down the drain far too quickly. Then afterwards decided that I lost good opportunities to experiment. If it's going down the drain anyway, you won't lose anything by experimenting.:)

--JB"

Update:

I did a bit of experimenting with this. I took JB advise and cut 1 qt wash by 20% and pitched 1 Tbsp distillers at 70 degrees - not to active but yet some action going on so I took another qt and cut that by 10% - big difference - still not aggressive - but a considerable deference from 20%. I cut the remaining 4 gal 10%
and pitched both starter qt's in at 70 degrees and am going to hold the ferment at that temp. SG 1.03 I think thats due to cuts and we will see in the morning !

Scotty,
After my LONG experience with EC1118, I switched to Baker's yeast (with a little deviation to Distiller's yeast) and consistently get around 11.5% return on a 1.080 wash. Go figure.