Gravity high in secondary

I know, I know. I should have checked FG on this before transferring it to secondary. Mea culpa.

This is my second AG batch. It's an amber ale. OG was much higher than expected due to surprisingly high efficiency and higher than expected boil-off rate with a new 10-gallon kettle. It was 1.059, to be precise (I was shooting for 1.054). Being new to the process, I shrugged it off, instead of adding some water (I didn't want to screw up the hopping on this one). I pitched a 1.5 liter starter of 1056, and fermentation seemed to really take off, so I didn't sweat it. I was in a rush tonight (dinner was on its way to the table, and my daughter was begging for ice cream already), so I racked to secondary. After dinner, I took a hydro sample from the dregs of the primary and saw the gravity was still at 1.019 (at day 12). There's still a lot of yeast in suspension (it's still pretty milky). Obviously, I'll give it another week in secondary and check it again to see what's happening, but is it likely to go down at this point, or is it more likely I'll need to pitch some more yeast? Thoughts?

It's likely to continue fermenting in the secondary. You've got plenty of yeast in suspension, so assuming a fair part of that 1.019 beer is fermentable sugars, the yeast will continue to do its thing.

I'd be surprised if you need to pitch more yeast. All you need is more time.

Okay, I won't panic, then. I see some yeast is settling out already this morning, so I'll try swirling it back in it a few times over the course of the week if the gravity doesn't go down. Thanks for the words of wisdom.

Leave it alone for another week or two (at least). I'd also advise looking into NOT racking to a brite tank except when requires either for the style or to add something that works BEST off of the yeast.

I get super clear brews by giving them at least three weeks in primary and using a yeast that's rated at least high in flocculation. The vast majority of ales benefit more from a long primary.

Oh, I know. I'm planning to dry hop this one, though, and when I do that in primary, I seem to be losing a lot of aroma to the yeast cake.

But I'll leave it alone for a while, like you suggest. I guess there's no rush.

Rushing homebrew rarely ends well. Depending on your mash temp, the yeast could have already converted all the sugars it can into happy juice.

With the flocculation rating of Wyeast 1056 (medium-low) it will take some time to fall out of suspension (or at least what you can see will fall out, there will be more than enough to bottle carbonate still in there).

I suggest reading more of the readily available information about a yeast strain before selecting it. If it's with a kit, you can often either substitute it with another, or have them not include it at all. If you're making your own recipe, then you have the ability to select any yeast you wish.

First off, you wanna take those readings before racking off the yeast. Readings, as in multiple ones over a few days to make sure FG is stable. Ice cream or not, you shouldn't even be thinking about racking before you've taken the first of those readings. In this case, and considering the yeast used, after 12 days it's probably not going to drop any lower. 1056 will, however, stay up and leave the beer cloudy for some time after FG is reached.

So the beer is fine. I'm guessing that transferring it agitated it and got the yeast going again. It was down to 1.014 after 2 days and steady for a week. Given the high starting gravity, that's as low as I would expect it to drop. It's been on the hops 5 days, so it's going into bottles tonight. Thx for the advice.