newbee question

Ok, before anyone says "use the search", I have been cruising this forum for the better part of a month.

I have a wheat beer in primary now, its been there for 3 weeks. My OG was 1.055. The kit called for around 1.050. It seems to be stalled at 1.020. Again the kit calls for a FG of around 1.013. I don't know what I should do, bottle or wait. The recipe is as follows,

6.6 Lbs Briess Bavarian Wheat LME
2 oz Cascade hop pellets
Muntons dry yeast

Added all extract and 1oz hops and boiled for 45 min. Added the last 1 oz of hops and boiled for another 15 min. This was a full boil. cooled and pitched yeast at about 85F. Room temp of 68-70F.

Any advice is appreciated as this is my first attempt at brewing. Thanks!

If it's been in primary for 3 weeks I would say that 1.020 is probably where it its going to finish at. You could move the carboy to a warmer room to see if you can get a few more gravity points out of it but I doubt it's going to happen. Either way you are still going to have drinkable beer, it just may be a little sweeter than anticipated.

With your 1.055 OG, 1.013 FG is what you'd expect given Briess's datasheet, which quotes the fermentability of their wheat LME at 75%. However, the FG from your recipe was quoted starting at 1.050, so your higher OG could bump that up. If all the excess were unfermentable (unlikely), then that'd push up to 1.018.

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence around of extract batches finishing high at 1.020, so that may be it as well. I haven't confronted this issue---my extract batches have all attenuated well---but the typical advice is to raise the temperature a bit, as mitchar suggests, and to gently swirl the fermentor to kick some yeast back into suspension. If you're bottling, I would suggest giving these a try. If it does turn out to be a temporarily stalled fermentation, adding priming sugar and bottling could lead to bottle bombs when those other 7 points ferment away.

Thanks guys. It's going to sit for another 2 weeks before I can bottle anyway. It was either this weekend or the weekend of the 29th.

Raising the temp, and the swirl, as others have mentioned, are the best way I know to get it going again. If that doesn't work take a look at these

Top ten ways to restart fermentation:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/11/top-ten-ways-to-restart-fermentation.html

unionrdr said:

The fact that the room was 68-70F & the wort was some 85F+ is your problem.

Click to expand...

I don't think one can state this with certainty. Several times, I've pitched in the 75-85°F range, then cooled to the low 60s for the rest of the fermentation. These have gotten down as far as 1.008 with an extract+steeped grain batch.

It's not a best practice, but I don't think it's clearly his problem.