whoops.. high gravity in hefeweizen after three weeks

Lesson learned. Check gravity more often.

I guess the reason I'm posting this is wishful thinking. That someone will say: It's fine! But I don't think so.

Fermentation of WLP300 in OG 1.055 all grain wort. Three weeks go by at about 60F ambient. Fermentation apparently came and went. Tested gravity during bottling (first time ever I didn't even cold crash) and it was surprisingly high at 1.020.... So now the question is... what am I to do with these bottles? I will put them in a cooler .. Do you think they will leak or break?

Hard to tell, how much priming sugar did you use, or what Co2 level did you shoot for? Putting them in the cooler is good idea, but I don't think you will have any bombs, maybe some gushers, only time will tell.

P.S- Did you batch prime this beer, and if so did you check gravity before or after you added the primer? I made that mistake once.

1.020 doesnt sound totally out of this world. You should be fine let them carb.

After a week or two put a bottle in the fridge for 24-48 hours and try it...

Repeat this process every day or two until you get the carbonation how you want it then fridge them all.

Might it have been that your mash temp was a little on the high side? If that was the case then you wouldn't have much to worry about.

Your fermentation temp was a little on the low side which also might have had some influence on fermentation stalling before the batch had attenuated fully plus, if it went the whole time at 60f, your "CO2 in solution" levels prior to bottling could be considerable. How much priming sugar did you use?

The mash temp started at 154 and ended at 149. The sparge was about 170.

I mixed the priming sugar to the entire batch, mixed well. But I took the gravity of the last beer that wouldn't fill a bottle. 3.2 oz corn sugar for 3 gallons.

I was expecting a 1.014 or so final gravity considering the wlp300 75% attenuation. The beer tasted obviously sweet (sweeter than the intended beer). The ABV at that point was 4.2% ABV instead of the target 4.75%

3.5 lbs Wheat Malt, Ger
2.3 lbs Pilsner (2 Row)
5.0 oz Carafoam
2.0 oz Aromatic Malt
1.0 oz Acid Malt


I think next time I make this one, I will bring the ferment to a warmer room for the second week.

I will go ahead and put the bottles in a safe container and test them every week. Thanks for the advice.

iambeer said:

The mash temp started at 154 and ended at 149. The sparge was about 170.

I mixed the priming sugar to the entire batch, mixed well. But I took the gravity of the last beer that wouldn't fill a bottle. 3.2 oz corn sugar for 3 gallons.

I was expecting a 1.014 or so final gravity considering the wlp300 75% attenuation. The beer tasted obviously sweet (sweeter than the intended beer). The ABV at that point was 4.2% ABV instead of the target 4.75%

3.5 lbs Wheat Malt, Ger
2.3 lbs Pilsner (2 Row)
5.0 oz Carafoam
2.0 oz Aromatic Malt
1.0 oz Acid Malt


I think next time I make this one, I will bring the ferment to a warmer room for the second week.

I will go ahead and put the bottles in a safe container and test them every week. Thanks for the advice.

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I reckon these two highlighted points will have had quite an influence on your gravity reading being as high as it was.

Last dregs of beer in the bottling bucket with the highest concentration of priming sugar solution. That's what you taste tested too, isn't it?? If so, I reckon you have absolutely nothing to worry about whatsoever.:fro:

Yes, take gravity samples before adding sugar to prime. Same for tasting. I don't bother lugging the carboys into the kitchen to bottle before taking a sample.

I wanted to give you the full disclosure, but I doubt a well mixed primed batch could go up 6-10 points. Diluted sugar isn't lighter than wort. I'm still convinced that the yeast didn't finish. I am often wrong though.

It might make a few points difference, and 1.016-1.017 isn't too far off from 1.012 to give a whole lot of worry. RDWHAHB; it's all a learning process, right?

metanoia said:

It might make a few points difference, and 1.016-1.017 isn't too far off from 1.012 to give a whole lot of worry. RDWHAHB; it's all a learning process, right?

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Since you put it that way, how many gravity points does it take to start worrying about pressure?

Pressure... in the bottles? It all depends on if fermentation was finished (why it's advised to have consistent readings over multiple days) and how much priming sugar was used.

metanoia said:

Pressure... in the bottles? It all depends on if fermentation was finished (why it's advised to have consistent readings over multiple days) and how much priming sugar was used.

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If you don't know the answer, you shouldn't be telling people what to do.

That's the best answer he could have given. If you don't know what your final gravity was supposed to be, you can't tell whether it's high enough to worry about it.

Depends on the attenuation of the yeast strain used, the mash temp (if all grain) or the supplier of malt extract if not, the amount of crystal malt used, how much priming sugar was used... Etc.

Thus why it's much easier to take readings 3 days apart between bottling to ensure it isn't still dropping, then when you're sure it's done bottle with the appropriate amount of dextrose.

At this point, the best you can do is put your recipe with yeast and everything into software like Beersmith or Hopville, and see what it estimates the final gravity at. Add 0.003 to it, which is what BeerSmith tells me 3.2oz of corn sugar should add to a 3 gallon batch. See if that matches the sample you took. It's still guesswork, but it's the best you can do to see if it's wildly off.

Thank you andycr.

iambeer, you seem to be a more popular and knowledge member here, so I'd assume your posts would provide more help than empty accusations. First, I never told anyone what to do. Second, do you have a better answer? If you did, it sounds like you just should have posted it. Truth is, there is no way to know if fermentation is complete without taking hydrometer readings across multiple days. Even then, if fermentation was stuck no one could say 100% one way or the other if it would start up again after bottling.

If you don't have anything useful to add, don't clutter up the thread with attacks that prey on novice brewers, especially when their answer was the only reasonable one to someone looking for specific information on the general concept of "pressure".

And now that I'm back on the computer instead of my phone like yesterday, I can see that we already saw that 3.2oz of priming sugar was used. If we take that out and say that the FG was 1.017 according to andycr's, it seems close enough to the target FG to not worry, as I have already posted. And again, something that the OP needs to start doing is taking those hydrometer readings a couple of days apart to make sure the SG has stopped dropping; this is something any brewer on here will and has suggested, and takes the majority of the guesswork out of this thread.

I'd really love to know if I'm missing anything here, because as I said I'm still a novice trying to learn everything I can about the brewing process.

I think you'll blow up some bottles. Bottling, stirring, and agitation sometimes restart a stuck fermentation. Oh well, it's a good beer at high carbonation. When they start blowing up, that's when I'd start drinking them and chilling the rest. I think it's something like 1 gravity point = 1/2 volume c02. So if you have 6 points to go, there's 3 volumes plus whatever your sugar will give you. That's probably enough to blow some **** up.

If OP starts getting bottle bombs, I believe "burping" the bottles then recapping is a good solution, correct?

Ogri said:

Might it have been that your mash temp was a little on the high side? If that was the case then you wouldn't have much to worry about.

Your fermentation temp was a little on the low side which also might have had some influence on fermentation stalling before the batch had attenuated fully plus, if it went the whole time at 60f, your "CO2 in solution" levels prior to bottling could be considerable. How much priming sugar did you use?

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My mash temp to the best of my ability was not high. I tried to keep it to the recommended range of 154/149 which is what I try for all my mash at this point no matter the style.

It was at 60F the whole time of fermentation. I'm on my third beer, an American pale ale, brewed in the 60F basement and it is also high at 1.020 after three weeks. In a few days I'll be sampling a kolsch in the same environment.


The first two beers, a porter and a hefeweizen, are carbing nicely (in the same 60F room) (it's been three weeks in bottle conditioning), as if they had reached final gravity at bottling time. They don't seem overly sweet....