FG of 1.024 acceptable?

I am in the process of brewing my first beer, a Marzen Lager (yes, bad choice for 1st beer, but all the same) and my FG is at 1.024 after I correct for temp and offset on my hydrometer. Unfortunately I forgot to take an OG, but the recipe says it is 1.052.

Primary was at 55° F for a little over 2 weeks. Fermentation definitely took place, i saw air bubbles and had a krausen although a small one. I even did a diacetyl rest at 65° F for 3 days. Yeast strain was 2 dry packets of Saflager 34/70.

Is 1.024 acceptable or should I do something like pitch more yeast to get it going again?

1.024 is a bit high for an 1.052 beer. it'll be overly sweet right now.

i've never used dry lager yeast, but when I make lagers I always pitch a lot of yeast.

Is it still in primary or did you rack out of it?

I racked it off last night into a corny, which is when I took the 1.024 reading. I had taken a reading a week before after the airlock stopped bubbling at 1.026.

My local homebrew shop insured me 2 packs of the saflager was more than enough, but it's possible I did not aerate enough before pitching. On their advice, I pitched at 75° and then did a gradual cooling down to 55°.

did your lhbs also agree that it was a good idea that your first beer should be a lager and not an ale? be careful of those guys...most of em are pretty knowledgeable...but they aren't always the sharpest knives in the drawer. anyway take 3 days of SG and you'll know your FG. next time try an ale so you can learn the real basics, and remember to take an OG. you won't know your alcohol content for your current batch; it will be a guess based on the estimated OG, which can be a pretty wide range from what the recipe calls for in my experience.

well, my lhbs did not recommend the lager, that was my bright idea. anyway, assuming my SG stays at 1.024 for a few days, is there anything I can do such as pitching more yeast to bring it down further? what about adding more IBU's to counter act the sweetness?

I went to my lhbs and bought a packet of Nottingham yeast to try and finish it down another 10 points or so.

The packet states to use wort to cool down the starter. Would it be ok to to pull from my secondary to cool the strain and then add it back to the corny? I will sanitize my gear, but should I worried about contamination?

If you mashed grains at a high temp (high 150s+) you may have left a lot of unfermentables in there...but a Marzen is usually supposed to finish on the sweet end anyway so your beer should be quite drinkable and "to style". I just recently did an Oktoberfest Ale batch and finished at 1.02 and it's delicious. So you are likely fine.

dogllama said:

My local homebrew shop insured me 2 packs of the saflager was more than enough, but it's possible I did not aerate enough before pitching. On their advice, I pitched at 75° and then did a gradual cooling down to 55°.

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I'm pretty new to this, so I may be wrong, but I thought you were supposed to pitch at or below your fermenting temp. Could pitching at 75 and then cooling have changed the effectiveness of the yeast? Especially because it was a lager...

rsquared said:

I'm pretty new to this, so I may be wrong, but I thought you were supposed to pitch at or below your fermenting temp. Could pitching at 75 and then cooling have changed the effectiveness of the yeast? Especially because it was a lager...

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Pitching at your fermenting temperature is recommended because at the higher temperatures yeast are much more active and will begin fermentation sooner. Normally, that's a good thing. However, the fermentation will cause the temperature to rise and you may have difficulty getting the temperature down to the desired fermentation temperature. Plus the yeast can start producing fusel alcohols, excessive esters, etc.

Long story short - it doesn't necessarily change the effectiveness of the yeast (unless it's really hot). But it can reduce the quality of your final product (though it depends). The best way to control lag times are probably through pitch rates and oxygenation.

I pitched the Nottingham tonight. I brought the beer temp up to 70 and the yeast starter down to 75ish before i pitched. I didn't end up cooling it with beer, instead I used a pan full of ice water to cool down my pitching glass from 90 to 75 over the course of 10 minutes or so. I took another hydro reading and it hadn't budged a point so hopefully the new yeast can help out. I'll see next week!

I did a SG reading tonight and I've dropped 2 points down to 1.022, it's not what I was hoping for, but the lager has a nice clean taste and doesn't seem too sweet to me. I'm going to cold crash and filter it now and hope for the best. Maybe I can get down to 1.020 by the end of it all.

if it's only been 4 days since you pitched notty, i'd give it another 4 before doing anything.

Yes, it is going to take awhile as you don't have the same amount of Notty as you would if you had pitched it into fresh wort. Give it more time. The gravity coming down is a sign that it is working.

depending on the specifics of your recipe, a 1.052 beer *should* finish down around 1.010 with 34/70. Unless you have a massive amount of crystal malt in your beer, anything above 1.014 is almost certainly too high.

Unless you maybe confused maltodextrin for dry malt extract, 1.024 is much too high.


however, I can't explain why, after 2 full weeks at 55F, it hasn't attenuated more. 2 packs of 34/70 ought to have been sufficient, and oxygenation isn't required for dry yeasts. Pitching at 75F may not lead to ideal flavour development, but it should get you strong attenuation if nothing else. How steady was your temperature control? Large temperature swings (+/- 5 to 10 degrees) could cause the yeast to floc off early

prosper said:

Large temperature swings (+/- 5 to 10 degrees) could cause the yeast to floc off early

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Temperature swings to the cold(I assume) will cause the yeast to flocculate and not come back? You have any information on that? I'm curious.

see here: http://realbeer.com/spencer/FAQ/stuck-fermentation.html

My temp control was a very steady 55F for fermentation. Not really sure why the G didn't go lower. The Notty helped a bit, but not significantly. I gave it a bit more time and it didn't drop below 1.022. I filtered and carbed 2 nights ago and it tastes pretty good. A little green still, but i was eager to finish the process and start on my next batch. This time I'm going for a Pale Ale. The one thing I am going to do differently is make a starter for my yeast and aerate the heck out of my wort before pitching.

As others said, aeration is not essential for dry yeast, and that goes doubly for double-pitching.

Champagne yeast can be used to dry out beers, once the beer yeast has gone as far as possible. *shrug*