did not fully ferment

So I am sitting here with a porter that has been fermenting for a month and a half and seems to have stopped fermented. What do i do and what can i do?

specs:
OG: 1.05
current gravity: 1.012 (two weeks prior to reading it was 1.015)
yeast used: WLP005 British Ale

i did add yeast nutrients

You bottle or keg it. It is done.

Might be done man 1.012 is pretty low probably not gunna get less then that

bottlebomber said:

You bottle or keg it. It is done.

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Yes. Done is done- it's not going to get any "doner".

Thats what i was figuring. Its just charts i was looking at i was expecting a 7% abv and not a 5. i guess that must have been affected by the yeast, temp, etc

76% Apparent Attenuation
That's done.

Done. You've got a 5% ABV beer there. Get some bubbles in her and swallow, burp, relieve, repeat. Got it?

In the future, you can expect your beers to ferment to about 1/4th of the starting gravity, like this: 50/4 = 12.5, or 1.012 ish.

bottlebomber said:

You bottle or keg it. It is done.

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It is done. Bottle or keg and enjoy it.

fiestygoat said:

Thats what i was figuring. Its just charts i was looking at i was expecting a 7% abv and not a 5. i guess that must have been affected by the yeast, temp, etc

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It would have to ferment down to about .995 to become 7%, which as far as I know would be impossible for beer, and it would probably taste pretty nasty. I'd personally be happy with what you got.

You may have been expecting 7% abv but to get that abv out of a beer with an OG of 1.05 you would need of an FG of less than 1, meaning your beer would essentially be thinner than water and that's not going to happen.

StophJS said:

You may have been expecting 7% abv but to get that abv out of a beer with an OG of 1.05 you would need of an FG of less than 1, meaning your beer would essentially be thinner than water and that's not going to happen.

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Actually that's not as hard as you think. Alcohol is much less dense than water (0.78), so beers that attenuate very well can get below. I'll bet a lot of saison brewers have gotten below 1.00. I got very close with a saison using Wyeast 3711.

^^^ Perhaps, but this is a porter recipe using an English yeast. There's no way it's going to happen with this combination.

To echo the others, it's done. Short of using brett or something similar, it's not getting any lower.

Passedpawn is right. I've gotten down to 1.000 even with 3711. If I had a pound more sugar in there or added some brett I know I'd be below 1.

DannPM said:

Passedpawn is right. I've gotten down to 1.000 even with 3711. If I had a pound more sugar in there or added some brett I know I'd be below 1.

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I guess you would know if you have seen it. I had sort of always assumed that below 1 was reserved for champagnes or meads. Below 1 for a beer seems like one of those things that's of course theoretically possible but doesn't actually happen. With ethyl alcohol at .78 as dense as water it would be interesting if someone could calculate the absolute minimum abv necessary for < 1. If I had a better mind for math...

You answered your own question! With wort, say, mashed at 146-148, you get an extremely fermentable wort, almost no dextrins at all, next to nil. On top of that, you're also adding a pound of sugar (or at least I did). The sugar profile of that wort pre-pitch would be roughly similar to a champagne or mead IMO