Stuck fermentation!

Have brewed a bock extract kit it has been 17 days since placing in primary. Meet OG but have been stuck at 1.028 for 6 days. I rehydrated lager yeast and pitched at 70 degrees. The temperature for fermentation was 60-63 degrees. It took 24 hours until activity in air lock was noted Activity was moderate for 5 days. My question is what to do now!

You're using lager yeast in 60+ degree temperatures?

Did you measure the current SG with an accurate hydrometer?

If it's still stuck at 1.028, and you can't get it to lager fermentation temperatures anyway, I'd give up on the lager yeast and pitch a clean well attenuating ale yeast, like nottingham. Lager yeast doesn't taste good when it's fermented at 70 degrees.

In any case, if it's stuck and more yeast has been tried I'm not sure what else to do. Did you have a lot of unfermentables in the recipe? Sometimes bocks have a ton of dark crystal malts and if not enough yeast is pitched at the beginning, it might not want to finish up. What was the recipe?

Yes the lager yeast was stated to ferment safely at ale temps. I pitched when wort was at 70 and the temp of wort was 60-63 during fermentation temps.

The hydrometer was accurate and temp adjusted. It had bout a pound of speciality grains choc. malt 3.3 Munich lme 3.3 of dark lme and 4 lbs of dme. I think pitching an ale yeast is warned.

dwturnernc said:

The hydrometer was accurate and temp adjusted. It had bout a pound of speciality grains choc. malt 3.3 Munich lme 3.3 of dark lme and 4 lbs of dme. I think pitching an ale yeast is warned.

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With dark LME, Munich LME and dark grains, it may be less fermentable than you'd like. What was the OG?

The OG was 1.067!

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I am having a similar problem. Brewed a bock extract kit almost three weeks ago. Used WLP German Bock yeast. I did a starter, it was about 1700ML at high krausen when I pitched (if that is the right way to say how much). OG 1.062 (what i expected).

I pitched at 70 degrees and brought it down to 50 degrees over two days. It has been fermenting at 51 degrees since. For the last week it has been stuck at 1.030. I searched threads and decided to give the beer a stir and slowly raise the temp to 60 degrees for two days. I have done that and am lowering it back down to 50 degrees, but I don't think anything is happening.

Question: Should I try to repitch some more german bock yeast or try a different yeast strain? My lhbs even suggested a belgian yeast (can't remember which one) to finish it out.

I understand that extracts can often finish at or near 1.020, which I would be fine with. But I would like to see if I can get a bit more than what I have now. I don't think I had a lot of unfermentables, so I don't think it SHOULD be finished, even though I realize that it might be so.

Thanks.

I re-pitched with Nottingham , roused the yeast and increased temp but nothing happened, too sweet so I eventually dumped this batch. Recently I brewed a stout, og 1.061 after two weeks it was at 1.03. I used wlp 002 with a 1 liter starter. My question was is it stuck or is it done. I know that the stout will have a higher fg estimated was 1.02. The beer taste good but a little sweet but it was fine. So what to do? I searched the forums and net for solutions and spoke with the guy at the lbhs and here is what I found. 1. I can add brewers amalyses or beano to beer. Problem here was that once I did this I could not stop the process and beano report ably gives off taste. I could suspend fermentation by cold crashing, keg it and force carbonate the beer. That's a reasonable option. Or 2. I could steep 1.5 pounds of grain at 140 for two minutes and add that to the fermentation bucket in hopes of extracting the enzymes to break the long chains down and restart fermentation. If this does not work what harm could come. I felt like this was my best option and 24 hours later I have signs of fermentation. I hope this works and I'll keep you posted.

A couple of other options for high FG's:
1) If you keg and have an extra, go ahead and keg it, purge with CO2 and forget about it for a few months. You may find that it very slowly drops (I've had this happen on two occasions). That said, it probably won't drop a lot, which leads to #2:

2) Brew a really dry beer (you probably won't be able to do this with extract). Mash around 145-148, and let the mash sit for several hours. Use a high attenuating yeast. Then, blend the two beers together when the second beer is done fermenting. With a dry beer (1.005 is easily achievable) mixed with the high FG beer (1.030), you will land within a reasonable FG (1.017 or so).

I've had great success with #2 - you can even brew the same exact beer as the stuck one with a lower mash temp and save the first batch if you want the same style. Otherwise, experiment a bit and see what you end up with!