Can this beer be rescued?

The overview: Porter extract kit, 1.060 OG, in primary for 17 days, Windsor yeast, repitched with more windsor after 5 days. Took gravity today and it was 1.030. Obviously poor attenuation and not budging. You can see the wimpy krausen ring in the pics below.

Is there anything I can do? I dont really want to waste time bottling all of this if it's going to be a 2.5% ABV version of chocolate milk.



The other potential problem I have is when I opened the lid to take a reading I was surprised to see this inside:





The flash makes it look a little "whiter" than with the eye. It had a sort of oil spill like sheen to it. I dont know if its normal or a potential infection.

Thanks in advance!

I does not look infected, just stalled. Did you try to give it a shake with a sanitized spoon ? I worked for me a few times. It might just need a shake.

Cheers!

Black

1.030 is probably a bit high to finish, although I have bottled an all extract porter that finished at 1.028 and it wasn't all that bad after a couple, or so, months bottle conditioning, but that had an OG of about 1.078.

Was this porter Extract, PM or AG? Windsor yeast isn't a really strong attenuating yeast, if memory serves right, but shouldn't have been as weak as that.

What were your fermentation temps like throughout the 17 days of primary?? Certainly looks like it wasn't a very active fermentation/krausen but your present SG of 1.030 suggests it has undergone a considerable %age of the expected attenuation.

Personally, I'd try to warm it up to 70 to 75*f, give the bucket a swirl to try and re-suspend the yeast (sounds like you have plenty yeast pitched, that's for sure) and see if that has any positive effects.
If that didn't cause a change in the SG I'd start thinking about possibly pitching a pack of champagne yeast.

GenIke said:

The overview: Porter extract kit, 1.060 OG, in primary for 17 days, Windsor yeast, repitched with more windsor after 5 days. Took gravity today and it was 1.030. Obviously poor attenuation and not budging. You can see the wimpy krausen ring in the pics below.

Is there anything I can do? I dont really want to waste time bottling all of this if it's going to be a 2.5% ABV version of chocolate milk.

The other potential problem I have is when I opened the lid to take a reading I was surprised to see this inside:

The flash makes it look a little "whiter" than with the eye. It had a sort of oil spill like sheen to it. I dont know if its normal or a potential infection.

Thanks in advance!

Click to expand...

What was the OG of the recipe?
Did you aerate the wort?
Did you rehydrate the yeast?
How old was the kit?
What temp did you ferment at?

As to what you see-normal, just some hop oils and yeast floaters. When you rack put a hop sack around the cane and it will filter out in the bottle bucket

Extract kit w/ specialty grains.

Fermentation temps were ~ 62 to start. After five days I moved it to ~68, stirred vigorously and repitched (I thought I had zero fermentation at that point).

I cant really get any warmer than 68/69 degrees without getting creative.

duboman said:

What was the OG of the recipe?
Did you aerate the wort?
Did you rehydrate the yeast?
How old was the kit?
What temp did you ferment at?

As to what you see-normal, just some hop oils and yeast floaters. When you rack put a hop sack around the cane and it will filter out in the bottle bucket

Click to expand...

Did you aerate the wort? dumped though mesh screen/ funnel and stirred
Did you rehydrate the yeast? yes, both times
How old was the kit?dont know, cant be too old. the LHBS makes them a couple times a week, I dont know how old the extract itself would have been.
What temp did you ferment at?62 to start, moved up to 68 after 5 days

Just a thought, but you didn't use a campden tab in your water for this batch, did you? Like a whole tab for 5 gallons??

I've read that doing so can cause fermentation to be a bit lacking in the usual dynamic qualities and to stall out a bit high. I learned after mixing up a 5 gallon carboy of water and 1 Campden tab that I should only have used 1/4 of a tab for the 5 gallons

Have you tasted it?? If so, how was it?

I dont know what a campden tab is, so no

I have not tasted it. Once I repitched I just wanted to leave it alone for a couple weeks.

Didn't taste your SG test sample, eh? Oh well, give it a little taste, if it's too sweet maybe consider the champagne yeast route.

Campden tabs (sodium metabisulfite) are to counteract/get rid of chloramines in water.

I put the hydrometer right in the bucket.

We have chlorine, but not chloramine in our water.

Is there any negative on going the chanpagne yeast route at this point? Seems like my best option, but I'm only 3 real batches into my career. If I go to the LHBS and ask for champagne yeast will they know what I need? is there more than one kind?

There aren't really any negatives that I can think of off-hand for pitching some champagne yeast in an attempt to lower the SG on a porter that started out at only 1.060 and has stalled at 1.030. Ideally, I'd want to have exhausted the possibility of trying to re-start fermentation with the Windsor yeast, as there was definitely sufficient yeast pitched, by warming up the brew like mentioned previously, but you say that is not an option, so I'd try the Champagne yeast.

I'd have thought most LHBS would be well aware of Champagne yeast.