should I put my barleywine back into secondary?

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leoglenwood

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Heya,

hope all is well in your universe!
I brewed a Jamil recipe of a barleywine and got 1.110 for OG
and racked to secondary with some more yeast when it was 1.042; there was another two weeks of bubbling and I bottled tonight without checking FG (I know, that was a big dumb-dumb)...
after adding 5 oz priming sugar and bottling, I did a Hey Why not see what the FG was (with the sugar in there), and it was 1.035

so... should I decant back into secondary with a little more yeast, or will these bottles not explode?

the IBU is 98, so it can handle the sweetness, but FG was supposed to be 1.022 so I imagine I'm (not counting the 5 oz) about .010 or .009 off

Thanks for considering my avoidable dilemma.
 
(110 - 35)/110 = 0.68, or 68% (apparent) attenuation.

This is within the range for many low attenuation yeasts (What yeast did you use?) AND depending how accurate your brewing methods were... you might have ended up with more unformentables than the recipe called for (How close was your mashing temperature for all grain or partial mash? How about your steeping temperature? Did you SQUEEZE the steeping grains bag to get every last bit out?)

These any many other variables could cause your beer to be fully fermented at 68% apparent attenuation.

Some other questions... just to paint a fuller picture.

How long in Primary
How long in Secondary
Temp Control during Primary or Secondary (And if no temp control... what was the temp it fermented at).

One (less painful) experiment is to refrigerate all your bottles but 1 or 2 to stop fermentation for a while.
Put the 1 or 2 bottles in paper bags, and put the paper bags in a hardsided cooler.
Fill 2-3 milk jugs with your warm (80-90 deg F) tap water and put the jugs in the cooler to warm it up to 70+ degrees.

If the bottles don't explode in a week or so... open one (outside of your house) If not over carbonated (and a gusher) then you probably didn't make bottle bombs.

Unrefrigerate your other bottles and let them warm up... I recommend a good shaking or resuspend any yeast on day 2 or 3. Then wait as normal for them to carb up.
 
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