thesink

Recipes 

I brewed a stout on Friday, August 6th. The recipe was:

Steeping grains:
1 lb Crystal 60L
8 oz Chocolate Malt (UK)
8 oz Roasted Barley - 550L

Fermentables:
6 lb Dark Malt Extract Syrup
8 oz turbinado sugar

1 oz Nugget hops
1 oz Fuggles hops
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale yeast

I steeped the crystal, choco malt and barley for 30 minutes at 155-160 degrees. I boiled 3 lbs of the extract syrup for 30 minutes w/ the nugget hops before adding the final 3 lbs of the extract, boiled another 30 minutes. I added the turbinado sugar with 10 mintues left (I wanted to up the alcohol content a bit) along with the fuggles. OG ended up a little light than what Hopville was calculating: 1.052.

I didn't make a starter, but did smack the yeast package the night before. Pitched at just under 71 degrees. Moved the carboy into a cooler filled with 66 degree water and left in the cooler for 2 weeks. Moved out of the cooler onto the concrete floor in my basement for another 10 days.

My mistake was not taking a gravity reading before I transferred it to my bottling bucket. When I went to bottle it last night, the reading was at 1.028! I'm just stunned because it really should be around 1.015 or lower. Outside of not making a starter, what could I have possibly done wrong? I've had a couple of extract beers do this now, but this is the most eggregious example of missed FG I've seen yet.

Nateo

Recipes 

Did you aerate the wort before pitching the yeast?
I'll pour the chilled wort back and forth from the bucket to the kettle about 8-10 times before I pitch.

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To paraphrase Dr. England - "Off-flavors smooth with time. So do mountains. Brew it right from the start!"

My blogsite: http://nateobrew.blogspot.com/

thesink

Recipes 

Sorry, I forgot to mention that. Yep, I did aerate the wort. I do partial boils, so I boiled 3 gallons of bottled water. Then after I cooled the wort down, I mixed it with 2 gallons of clean water and then aerated it for about 5 minutes.

Burgs

Recipes 

Did you go ahead and proceed with bottling?

If not, and you have the carboys free, you could brew a quick British mild or bitter, something with a fast turnaround and rack it - then pitch this stout on the yeast cake... I bet it would take it the rest of the way down to where you want the FG to be.

*edit* I guess I can assume you bottled it since you said you had it in the bucket. Did you taste it? It's gotta be pretty sweet... :/

I guess what I'm suggesting is that if you find yourself in this situation again, might want to try pitching it all onto a nice cake o yeast.