Hi There , this is my first post -Been brewing a stout with OG 1078 to hit FG of 1013 to give us a 8.5 % Stout. Problem is we've stalled at an SG of 1017. ( commenced brewing this on 28/06/18 ) We've tried to restart with SO4 which is more resilient but no joy . Any thoughts on our next step please- smells great and tastes good but with the higher sugar still present seems unfinished? Cheers.
Maybe you're just out of fermentable sugar? Perhaps due to high mash temp? I'm a rookie so I'm doing a wild guess...
I believe theres plenty of fermentable sugar there but my thinking is that the yeast may have been killed off by a combination of higher ABV and also temp . We tried to cool the brew down but it reached 28ºc at one point and was heading North. Currently ambient is 22ºc and thats the same temp as the brew -so its sat there and is doing nothing and the Sg has remained the same for 6 days even with a new shot of yeast..
You're already at 78% attenuation Not sure how you arrived at an estimate of 1.013 for FG but that would give you 83% attenuation and pretty unlikely with a beer that big. Your S-04 wouldn't have done anything being that it's average attenuation is below 75%. Nottingham might have given you a point or two but I think you're just out of oxygen and no yeast is going to do anything. I'd say you're done and done. Chalk it up, bottle it up, drink up and enjoy!
ABV at 8.5% won't stop beer yeast. My first guess is insufficient oxygen at pitch. The yeast got tired and quit. Second guess is the fermentation is finished. 1.017 doesn't sound bad for a 8.5% beer. Third guess is that the fermentation is still going on, but slowly. There is a residual sugar test using reagent tablets, Clinitest, I believe, but they're hard to find and pricey. Recommendation: RDWHAHB. It will finish or it won't. High gravity fermentation is hard to predict.
That kind of attenuation for a stout, especially one of that ABV sounds awful good to me. If the gravity stays constant for 3 days, I'd be packaging it.
As above you said it smells great tastes great well amen brother you made hopefully a fine stout! Get her/him conditioning i say and enjoy the fruits of your labour.
Just had one the other week, temperature dropped unexpectedly and I couldn't get the us-05 to start up again even with a fresh pitch. Put in some WLP099 high gravity yeast and that's started things up again. Though this is supposedly one of the evil diastatic saccharomyces yeasts, so use with good reason That's said, sounds done to me (but I like them a bit sweet).
