Rack Too Soon

Brewing my first batch. I think I fell into the over anxious new brewer trap. Brewing from a LME kit...OG was 1.034 and FG is supposed to be 1.010-1.014, but it was only 1.020 when I racked after 9 days. Am I hosed, or will it be OK and just a learning experience?

Thanks all!!

Not necessarilly hosed buy you may have stopped fermentation if it was still going. Still with extract it may have actually been done at 1.020. Either way that is a really low ABV beer. At this point give it another week or two until it seems like it is clearing pretty well and then check the gravity. If it stays the same 3 days in a row then you can bottle it. Don't rush that or you could get bombs and then you will really be hosed.

Did you already bottle the beers, or did you just rack to a secondary fermenter? If you bottled already, there's a chance the fermentation was not complete and you could risk having bottle bombs.

If you just took it to a secondary, some fermentation can continue there and you should be fine.

There is always the chance fermentation was complete too. Sometimes extract beers get stuck around 1.02 FG

DonutMuncher said:

Did you already bottle the beers, or did you just rack to a secondary fermenter? If you bottled already, there's a chance the fermentation was not complete and you could risk having bottle bombs.

If you just took it to a secondary, some fermentation can continue there and you should be fine.

There is always the chance fermentation was complete too. Sometimes extract beers get stuck around 1.02 FG

Click to expand...

It is in a secondary, not bottled yet. Assuming it is "stuck" anything that can be done in future with extract beers to promote better fermenting?

Bonas96 said:

It is in a secondary, not bottled yet. Assuming it is "stuck" anything that can be done in future with extract beers to promote better fermenting?

Click to expand...

Wait for 3 days of the same SG reading. Wait 3 weeks before testing. No need rush, just start another batch and get that pipeline full.

DonutMuncher said:

There is always the chance fermentation was complete too. Sometimes extract beers get stuck around 1.02 FG

Click to expand...

This may be a dumb question, but is there any way to "restart" fermentation? Can you pitch more yeast, even after moving to a secondary, or should I just chalk this light ABV round up to experience?

Bonas96 said:

This may be a dumb question, but is there any way to "restart" fermentation? Can you pitch more yeast, even after moving to a secondary, or should I just chalk this light ABV round up to experience?

Click to expand...

If you warm up the area the fermenter/ secondary is in, it could kick off some fermentation. Also, you could boil up 1 lb of dme/ lme and add it to the secondary and it'll increase the OG, and ferment that out. That may help the FG drop.