Need 10 more points (Gravity)

Recipe Valdez Porter:
13lb 2 Row
2.5 Munich6
1.5lb Cara brown
1.25lb Chocolate Malt
1lb Crystal 120
1 cup of lactose
2 packages re-hydrated Safale S-05

6 gallon batch been in primary for 2 weeks.
OG= 1.083
Tested at 1 week 1.032 and at 2 weeks 1.032
Wanted it around 1.020 I only have Notty in my posession right now.
This beer has about 1" of thick krausen that never dropped. I tried to swirl it around a little to see if I could wake up the yeast and it didn't seem to help.
Fermented around 65
I was going to rack to secondary and add charred oak and vanilla. Should I add some more yeast to get that extra 10 points? It tastes pretty good but this is my first attempt at an imperial brew. Also I really didn't oxygenate properly so that may be the cause but the pitch rate should have been sufficient.

Fermenter

What was the mash temp? It could be that you don't have enough fermentable sugar to go lower.

well that was a problem as well. I think it mashed around 165 for at least 30 minutes. My thermometers broke.

That could do it right there....

So can I fix it? Add some more sugar, or should I just chalk it up to experience. If I add sugar how will it affect the taste of the beer?

Minjin said:

So can I fix it? Add some more sugar, or should I just chalk it up to experience. If I add sugar how will it affect the taste of the beer?

Click to expand...

Chalk it up to experience! Mashing at 165 and having almost 22% of your recipe in specialty grains along with lactose definitely created a much less fermentable wort and I would consider it done.

Adding more sugar will just raise the ABV but not really dry anything out or make it less sweet, in fact without adding additional hops to counter it will probably even become more sweet tasting.

Next time pay much better attention to your mash temperature with a good calibrated thermometer and use less specialty grain in your recipe.

Thanks for the input. I had 2 digital thermometers and they both took a dump on brew day.

Some people have had positive results using crushed BeanO tablets to help break down some of the long chain sugars you have in that brew. There are a few threads about it. You might want to look them up and see about doing it. I would just advise going in small steps so that it doesn't go too far.

Are you planning to bottle carbonate or keg the batch? If you're going to keg it, you could do the BeanO treatment then stabilize the batch before moving to serving keg.

Its going into a keg.

Then try using beano and then stabilize it once you hit your target. Just read up on the threads from people doing this to make sure you don't go too far.