So, two weeks ago I brewed the Imperial Stout from Extreme Brewing, with plans to make it a little bigger than the recipe in the book. The recipe I used called for 15 lbs of Dark LME, some stout-ish specialty grains and about 1/4 lb of Demerara sugar. I got a SG of about 1.114 ( a little high for the written recipe, but I may not have topped up with enough water), and I pitched it onto a whole cake of healthy White Labs California V from a pale ale I had recently secondary'd. The yeast has lent some interesting ester notes to the beer so far, but it doesn't attenuate as well as other yeats so I knew it would need some backup.
After 1 week of fermenting away at 66-68 degrees, signs of fermentation started to slow. I planned on bumping up the ABV a bit with a secondary sugar addition plus the addition of some secondary champagne yeast to finish the fermentation out. So, after one week of fermentation I took a hydro reading (1.055), boiled another 3/4 lb of demerara sugar in water with yeast nutrient, added a pack of dry wine yeast and areated as well as I could.
After another week, during which i saw a good amount of airlock activity and in which I raised the temp to about 70-72, I took another hydro reading. It's only down to 1.045.
I stirred to resuspend the yeast and put the fermentor back in the closet.
My question is "what can i do to get the grav down to around 1.028 where it needs to be?"
My next thought would be to add some crushed Beano tablets or amylase, as I used ALOT of LME and it probably had a high amount of unfermentables in there. Is it too late in the game to give it another good aeration? Should I use another yeast? Any other suggestions for stuff I haven't thought of?
After 1 week of fermenting away at 66-68 degrees, signs of fermentation started to slow. I planned on bumping up the ABV a bit with a secondary sugar addition plus the addition of some secondary champagne yeast to finish the fermentation out. So, after one week of fermentation I took a hydro reading (1.055), boiled another 3/4 lb of demerara sugar in water with yeast nutrient, added a pack of dry wine yeast and areated as well as I could.
After another week, during which i saw a good amount of airlock activity and in which I raised the temp to about 70-72, I took another hydro reading. It's only down to 1.045.
I stirred to resuspend the yeast and put the fermentor back in the closet.My question is "what can i do to get the grav down to around 1.028 where it needs to be?"
My next thought would be to add some crushed Beano tablets or amylase, as I used ALOT of LME and it probably had a high amount of unfermentables in there. Is it too late in the game to give it another good aeration? Should I use another yeast? Any other suggestions for stuff I haven't thought of?
