AHS Sweet Stout - What happened?

So, two weeks ago I started my first beer, the Sweet Stout kit (extract version)from AHS. The wort prep went fine and I actually wound up with a higher OG than indicated - 1.060 vs. 1.057. When the wort was cooled to ~80 degrees I pitched a vial of White Labs London Ale yeast which had been warming to room temp for about 48 hours - too long I think and no starter. After 24 hours I had good airlock activity and it tapered off around day 3, no problem. At day 5 I took a gravity reading - 1.022 , taste was good but a bit sweet. The instructions with the kit indicated FG should be about 1.012 so I let it keep going another couple days. At day 7 I took another gravity reading, also 1.022, so I did some research and decided that my best bet would be to rouse the yeast and transfer everything to secondary. The transfer went fine, except for spraying some beer all over the bathroom towards the end. I plugged the carboy with a clean airlock, wrapped it with a towel (bathroom has a window), filled the tub a third of the way up with cold water, and dropped a floating thermometer in the tub. I was able to keep the temperature at a steady 70 degrees although I found out a week later that the thermometer was reading ~8 degrees too warm, so it was really about 62 degrees. Yesterday I took another gravity reading, still 1.022 so I did some more research and decided the best course of action would be to rehydrate and pitch a packet of Nottingham yellow to get the gravity down. 26 hours later and there is no airlock activity, I can't see any suspended yeast (but it's a really dark beer) and the gravity reading is still 1.022.

So, the APV is currently about 5% by my math and the beer is drinkable but I'm wondering what happened? Is the instruction sheet with the beer wrong and everything went fine? The only big mistake I can see that I made was failure to properly aerate the wort after cooling. After smelling and multiple tastes, I don't think it's infected - my sanitazion procedures are pretty decent I think.

If I transfer this beer onto priming sugar in my bottling bucket, is it going to remain flat in the bottle or will the yeast reactivate to process the simple sugar?

Thanks,
Chris

What is the recipe? How much lactose or malto dextrin did you add?

Change AHS in your post to Austin Homebrew Supply and maybe Forrest will jump in ....He runs a text search on the threads a couple times a day, and pops in to answer any questions people have about his products.

I had almost the exact same issue with the AHS oatmeal stout (if you look at my old posts, I posted a lot about it a few weeks back), with almost the exact same numbers (we never got it below 1.020, with the expect FG around 1.012). Since it was only our second batch I assume we didn't do something right.

We bottled a few weeks back and just cracked the first one yesterday. It seems to have turned out pretty well for us, though a bit sweeter than we would have liked.

The recipe was composed of 6.5# of dark LME, .5# of base grains, 1.75# of specialty grains, and 1# of lactose. Good to know I'm not the only one with the issue. 9/9, did yours carbonate okay?

1lb of lactose in 5 gallons will contribute about 6 gravity points. You can safely subtract that from you FG since it will not ferment when calculating you attenuation.

Doing that you are sitting somewhere in the 70-75% attenuation range. I think that is reasonable for the yeast. Also, an 1.022 FG for a sweet stout is not unreasonable.

You may want to ask the folks at Austin Homebrew if the FG of 1.012 is taking into account the fact that the lactose is not fermentable. 1.012 is at the low end of FG for a sweet stout.

CGengo said:

The recipe was composed of 6.5# of dark LME, .5# of base grains, 1.75# of specialty grains, and 1# of lactose. Good to know I'm not the only one with the issue. 9/9, did yours carbonate okay?

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The first one we opened was a bit low on carbonation, though it was definitely there. However, I think that we may have gotten some uneven distribution of the priming sugar (we are still n00bs at this), and I am worried about uneven carbonation. I plan on opening another couple tonight from various points in the bottling order and will let you know how they look.

I'm still new at this myself, but it would surprise me that a sweet stout was supposed to finish at 1.012. I suspect it was finished at 1.022. Were the instructions generic or specific to the recipe you're making?

Rick

Beerrific said:

1lb of lactose in 5 gallons will contribute about 6 gravity points. You can safely subtract that from you FG since it will not ferment when calculating you attenuation.

Doing that you are sitting somewhere in the 70-75% attenuation range. I think that is reasonable for the yeast. Also, an 1.022 FG for a sweet stout is not unreasonable.

You may want to ask the folks at Austin Homebrew if the FG of 1.012 is taking into account the fact that the lactose is not fermentable. 1.012 is at the low end of FG for a sweet stout.

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I think you hit the nail on the head. I think the FG on the sheet is wrong. The lactose is an unfermentable sugar so it is going to leave some points behind. I would bet if the lactose wasn't there the og would be low but the fg would be right. I will fix the instructions. Sorry for the confusion.

Forrest

Revvy said:

Change AHS in your post to Austin Homebrew Supply and maybe Forrest will jump in ....He runs a text search on the threads a couple times a day, and pops in to answer any questions people have about his products.

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Thanks for that. I caught the post because of you.

FOrrest

Thanks Forrest and everyone else. I was thinking that 1.012 seemed a bit dry for a sweet stout - I was actually going to take a gravity reading on a bottle of Mackeson's tonight to see what it read - actually I think I still will, just for kicks because I love that stuff. I guess I'll go ahead and bottle as the yeast appears to have settled out completely. Thanks all.

I've had my eye on this kit for a while and am going to pick it up in the next week or two (but use the dry yeast). Is it me or does a pound of lactose seem like a lot? Would there be any problem with only using a half of that?

Definetly let us know how this tastes when all is said and done!

I went ahead a did a gravity check on a Mackeson's Triple XXX Milk Stout (which is fairly difficult to do with a carbonated beer - try pouring with no head in a 24in wine theif) and it registered at 1.022 - 1.024, so the AHS kit is dead on. You could probably cut the lactose back by a quarter or so to take the sweet edge off, not sure if I would go half for this style beer but it never hurts to give it a try. BTW, every sample I've taken from the theif has had great flavor, really looking forward to drinking this chilled and carbonated.
Cheers!

If it matters now, the beers I checked tonight are carbonated, though a bit on the low side. The beer tastes good, though sweeter than we were originally going for.

I am going to assume the problem was ours and not a problem with the kit. AHS does good stuff.

What everyone else said...i just bottled my AHS sweet stout 2 hours ago, FG was 1.020 (OG=1.064). No way your FG's gonna get that low. Lactose will bring your OG & FG up. On top of that, sweet stout style has FG's @ 1.017-1.022 if i remember, so you're doing fine. And it's a SWEET stout, it's supposed to be "sweet." After some conditioning and bottling, (and CO2), it should be fine.

Do you think this kit would work with the dry yeast, or because of the high gravity(and I might add the 1% alcohol boost), is liquid yeast the way to go?

I see no reason that dry yeast wouldn't work, it's not a particulary high OG beer. What you'll lose by switching to a dry yeast like Nottingham is the taste intricacies that you would get from a yeast that is designed to mimic the beer's origins. From what I've read, and that's all I can go on, the dry yeasts are generally more neutral flavored and will emphasize the flavors of the malt more so than adding their own flavor profile.

Dry yeast work great for stouts. They finish clean and do not add much flavor.

I brewed this kit a few months ago and got a similar FG.
This beer was a big hit, and I will be making more.

I used the whole lb of lactose and it tasted very close to the Mackeson's.
Delicious!

I brewed this kit a couple weeks ago...and after 5 days the FG was 1.28...and four days latter it is still 1.28 (and I only used 2/3 of the bag of lactose). I used Munton's Dry-yeast (which after this 2nd batch of high FG beer might be my last use of it)....is there anything I can do to try to get it down anymore or is it pretty much done? I have it in a glass carboy and I tried swirling it around a little bit to hopefully reactivate the yeast but is there anything else I should be looking at doing. My fermentation temps are a little low (average 65-66 degrees)...could that be my problem?