Fermentation question

I bought an amber ale kit from my local homebrew store. It fermented for less than a week and stopped. So we opened the primary and it had that crusty ring around the bucket (krausen?) Took hydrometer reading and it was 1.020. I did not take an OG because I totally forgot to and then remembered like 4 days later.

I know ,not too smart...

So we aerated the wort and it fermented for about an hour.. Next day took a reading and it was still 1.020.. So we pitched more yeast yesterday and it's not fermenting at all, maybe a bubble in the bubbler here or there every 2-5 minutes or so.. The temp on the bucket has been between 60 and 65 degrees..


My question is, did I mess up by adding too much yeast? How long should I wait to take another reading? I am really worried that I messed up a whole batch on my first try..

Well, the only mistake I see there is aerating the beer. After fermentation starts (or in this case finishes), you don't want to oxygenate or aerate, even if fermentation seems stuck.

In this case, it may be stuck or it may be finished. What was the recipe (ingredients) and what yeast did you use? You may find (as I did in the past) that some extract brews will just not get any lower than 1.020.

Keeping it "between 60 and 65 degrees" is probably not good- you want a stable temperature. Wrap it up with a sleeping bag (to minimize temperature fluctuations) and try to keep it at 65 if you can.

It was a True Brew Amber all malt kit. It came with the yeast (dry) and I didn't save the packages (In hindsight I should have) It had liquid and dry malt and hops pellets..

We will defo try the sleeping bag idea.

So if it is stuck can I still bottle it?

Don't be in a hurry to bottle it....Let it sit for another week and take a couple readings...If they haven't change over 3 days then you can either rack to secondary or bottle for 3 weeks...Letting it sit around for another week won't hurt your beer (in fact it will improve your beer) but bottling to early may result in bottle bombs....and wasting your beer.

Well we defo don't want bottle bombs so we will leave it Thanks!

You could always stir in a cup of wyeast yeast nutrient. This can be used to take the FG down a few points but I doubt if it will cause massive changes from 1.020; you're probably talking a min of 1.015.

Can also be added to the boil for high gravity beers with expected difficulty in fermenting.

You could also try bumping up the temp a little bit. Try to get it stable around 68-70 and give the fermenter a swirl to rouse the yeast off the bottom. Don't splash the beer while doing this, just a gentle swirl. Try to hold it at the higher temp for a few days and see if that gets things going again.