A week after Racking gravity is still the same

Hi,

I'm brand new so please bear with me.
I'm starting with a Pilsner.

This is a timeline of my brew.
4th : OC = 1.04
8th : Rack to secondary Gravity = 1.02
14th : Gravity = 1.02


Shouldn't my gravity lower overtime?

Thanks
Casey

caseyvill said:

Hi,

I'm brand new so please bear with me.
I'm starting with a Pilsner.

This is a timeline of my brew.
4th : OC = 1.04
8th : Rack to secondary Gravity = 1.02
14th : Gravity = 1.02


Shouldn't my gravity lower overtime?

Thanks
Casey

Click to expand...

Looks to me like it dropped 20 points. Perhaps it's done.
More info on your fermenting practices might help others w/answers.

Sounds done. What was your mash temp?

And what was the recipe? Ferm temps?

I'll try to add as much detail as I can.
Thanks for the help btw.

This is a kit from "The Brew House"

I keep the room at 65F -70F

Day 1

1. Added pH adjuster
2. Add 8L of water
3. Add wort
4. Stir
5. Take OG (1.04)
6. Place lid on fermenter (not air tight)
7. Let sit until foam rises and subsides

After 2 days it foamed so much it hit the top and went over.

Day 4 (after foam subsides)

1. Racking to secondary fermentor
2. Take Gravity (1.02)
3. Close lid with airlock
4. Let sit for another 10-15 days

So here I am at day 11 and the Gravity is still 1.02
I just took the temperature and it was at: 65F

Thanks again for the help.

You're where you're supposed to be, you only rack to secondary once the beer is done fermenting.

That's a very short wait before racking. I've never waited less than a week. The yeast are often still fairly active for quite a while, even when the foaming/churning subsides.

An FG of 1.020 is pretty darn high, particularly for a 1.040 start. A more typical FG would be 1.008-1.012ish. You're only at about 2.6% ABV, so the yeast should not be slowing down due to alcohol tolerance. If you have a very unfermentable wort, then they might slow, but that doesn't sound like a normal fermentation to me

Are you reading your hydrometer to 3 decimals? If you're rounding, say, from 1.043 down to 1.04, and from 1.017 to 1.02, that'd be more common. Still on the high side, but closer to typical.

Was this an extract kit? What kind of yeast?

Why in the world would you put it in a secondary after 4 days? I know instructions from the kit. Next time leave it in the primary fermenter for 3 weeks and the bottle/keg. No need to secondary unless you are adding something like fruit.

You have a hydrometer... use it.
Next time, wait at least 1 week, and take a reading (to the third decimal). Wait 2 days and take another reading. Once the readings are the same after two days, it's ready to rack.

+1 for waiting longer next time and making sure to read out the hydrometer three decimals. How does it taste? like warm flat beer?

caseyvill said:

I'll try to add as much detail as I can.
Thanks for the help btw.

This is a kit from "The Brew House"

I keep the room at 65F -70F

Day 1

1. Added pH adjuster
2. Add 8L of water
3. Add wort
4. Stir
5. Take OG (1.04)
6. Place lid on fermenter (not air tight)
7. Let sit until foam rises and subsides

After 2 days it foamed so much it hit the top and went over.

Day 4 (after foam subsides)

1. Racking to secondary fermentor
2. Take Gravity (1.02)
3. Close lid with airlock
4. Let sit for another 10-15 days

So here I am at day 11 and the Gravity is still 1.02
I just took the temperature and it was at: 65F

Thanks again for the help.

Click to expand...

1.040 to 1.020? That's a VERY little amount of attenuation even for a session beer if that's what this was. At that point, you're at around 2.5% alcohol...

What was the recipe or the beer kit? Do the instructions say what the OG and FG are expected to be? I'm wondering if maybe you under pitched or perhaps your yeast viability was shot. - Although I just realized you had a blow off?? Something doesn't seem to be adding up to me. Need more info.

For what it's worth, the others are right about leaving the wort in primary for a while - I'd say 2 weeks before racking to bottle bucket and then bottling - if you aren't adding fruit or dry hopping, skip secondary altogether.

Another issue with these prehopped extract kits is lots of times it is very easy to get an incomplete mixing of everything in the bucket and your OG can be sampled from a higher or lower concentration area of the wort, throwing your OG reading off. Without reading out to 3 digits, I wouldn't put too much faith in the Hydrometer readings. It leaves a lot of wiggle room, and at this point, theres not much you can do about it except learn the lessons for next time. How does it taste?

Also, looking around on the net, most shops that list the data for this recipe show the expected OG to be around 1.052, something that could easily be accounted for by incomplete mixing of the wort. Also, looking around on here, it seems your not the first to have this recipe finish roughly around 1.02.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f37/brewhouse-pilsner-bottle-not-351110/

LOTS of extract recipes stop right around 1.020. Something to do with the fermentability of the extract. There are ways to get it lower, but I'm not very good at this. You could try to wake the yeast up by swishing them into solution, but likely you are done.