Stuck fermentation?

Hi,
I'm new to the forum. I've brewed a few kit beers from festabrew. Those are pretty straight forward and a good stepping stone to more time consuming and complicated things. Its a 23 litre bag. Throw it in the bucket, stir in yeast and there you go. Rack in about 5 days then bottle with a cup of corn sugar after 7-10. anyway, 3 of those turned out great, how can it go wrong?

Festa: Magnotta::Festa Brew::Search Result

So I decided to go up another run and try a Muntons Blonde Beer kit thing. I also used a kilo of Muntons “Brewers Syrup”. I got it started all nice and dandy, the starting gravity was 1.039 and now its at 1.014 for about a week now. I'm not sure if it was destined to end that high or not.
Here is how I did it:
- boil a few litres of water and put into bucket.
- Put the yeast into a glass (half a cup) cooled to room temperature water.
- While im filling up the bucket, heat up the can and jar of syrup in boiling water and pour into bucket
- Fill the bucket to about 15 litres of boiled water.
- Stir, stir and stir
- Put the other 8 litres in straight from the tap (very clean well water)
- Drink a beer
- check temperature of bucket
- drink another beer
- check temperature of bucket
- pich yeast

it fermented great too, so I figured all was well. Maybe it is...

Anything I could have done to to make it end at that high a number? Is this fine for the ingedrients i've used? Any way to lower it? The reason I'm asking is because the other batches I've made ended around 1.004 to 1.008 but they were festabrew, not Muntons. Its not the end of the world though, and i'll bottle it and be happy if nothing can be done.

ive done alot of googling and multiple forum reading, but after my eyes stopped beign crossed, i still didnt have a solid answer..

Thanks
Marty

sometimes beer ends higher than others...if your worried you can try rousing the yeast but i doubt you had a stalled fermentation with a low starting gravity of under 1.040 (atleast from my experience). Give it a few days and take a hydro reading and if it didint drop further than your beers done.

What are your fermentation temps?

hi, 66-68 degrees. thats in my basement.

what is rousing and how would one do that?

jmartyg said:

hi, 66-68 degrees. thats in my basement.

what is rousing and how would one do that?

Click to expand...

rousing would involve swirling the fermented to bring some of the yeast back into solution. After a bit of the ferment the yeast will fall (flocculate) out and settle on the bottom especially in a colder setting. Swirl your fermented gently but make sure not to splash because beer doesn't like oxygen once fermentation has started. If you do get alot of air in the beer you can get off flavors later down the road.

What yeast did you use? Some yeasts tend to end on the higher end of the scale.

hi,
i used the yeast that came with the muntons kit. i can't remember what kind it is. i'll give it a little stirr today, i'm in no rush to bottle it.

Chances are it is finished. 1.039 to 1.014 is a 63% apparent attenuation. If you used the Munton's yeast that is probably as low as you'll go. Next time try the SafAle dry yeast, US-05 or S-04 English and you'll finish a bit lower.

The munton's kit yeast is notorious for having a low attenuation.

thanks. adding a different yeast at this point would do more harm than good, wouldn't it?

depends who you talk to....ive done it when my ferment stalled a while back but in general its not gonna go much lower. maybe it will drop down about 5 points at most. I would stick with what you have and just know for next time. from what the site says it should have finished at ~ 1.008 so if your really dying to have a little more alcohol it probably wouldnt hurt to add some dry yeast. From the kit info it says you recieved saflager yeast for a blond LAGER. If you fermented at ale temps that could have pooped out the yeast quickly although im not sure in this case....

the festa stuff all ended really around 1.004-6ish with the saflager yeast, even at 68 for some reason. But this brew thats confusing me isn't a festa kit. Its the one with the muntons ingredients and their yeast that comes with the cans.

I stirred it up, ill check it mid next wee kand see where it is. if it hasn't changed, then i'll bottle it and be happy.