Super Stuck Fermentation

I brewed the London porter kit from Austin Homebrew with the 1% alcohol boost on 12/23. The specs are:

• OG: ~1.060
• TG: 1.012
• Volume: ? since I was shooting for a specific gravity and not volume
• Ambient T: ~62
• Waterbath: Yes ~60*F
• Current SG: 1.021
• Yeast: Windsor

Now, we left for a trip and turned off the heater. When we got back ~10days later, the bath temp was 40*F. So, I took it out and strapped a heating pad to the side for a couple hours a day. SG never went down. So, I swirled it a bunch a few days later. Still nothing.

Next, I put it in a hot water bath (few inches deep). It was releasing gasses, but did not help. Still used heating pad to warm the beer. Ambient was higher during this process as the heater was now on.

Then, I sat down and calculated the apparent attenuation %(AA) for the beer: 67%. Researching Windsor (listed by Llallemand as Medium. Whatever that means), puts this yeast in the 65-70% AA range. Perfect, the yeast was doing what it was supposed to be doing.

So, I pitch some SafBrew T-58 I had handy, which can go up to 11.5% ABV. There was some activity with a small drop in SG. So, YAY! But, today the SG has inched back up with no surface activity. GRRRR.

Current recommendations by a local brewer are: pitch a wine yeast to finish or put in yeast nutrient. Can't do either of these as no LHBS exists.

My thoughts now:

1. Bottle the beer and just accept the higher residual sugar. Kept really cool, I should avoid many bottle bombs
2. The fun idea: Rack the beer into second carboy. Put sanitized water into original carboy and swirl vigorously. Pour slurry into flask and add mixture of barley malt sugar(from extra grain currently in possession) and cane sugar. Cap and shake vigorously to add O2. Then allow yeast to grow and ferment the starter. Pour into second carboy and see if it will ferment out.

Any thoughts? I was hoping to be drinking this one now, but nope . If I had a local source I would try the wine yeast as it is the simplest solution beside just bottling.

I have no idea. I wanted to ask a similar question about a beer i'm doing now but hate to burden them with even more stuck ferm. threads. good luck

It sounds like it's done. 67% attenuation sounds about right for that yeast. I don't know what the recipe is, but I assume that the recipe had some unfermentables in it to contribute to the dark color and mouthfeel of a porter.

I'd bottle it, if the FG hasn't budged.

oldschool said:

I have no idea. I wanted to ask a similar question about a beer i'm doing now but hate to burden them with even more stuck ferm. threads. good luck

Click to expand...

I don't think it is much of a burden if you've tried all you can.

It is best to ask and be told where to find answers than to make a massive mistake.

I say ask away!

YooperBrew said:

It sounds like it's done. 67% attenuation sounds about right for that yeast. I don't know what the recipe is, but I assume that the recipe had some unfermentables in it to contribute to the dark color and mouthfeel of a porter.

I'd bottle it, if the FG hasn't budged.

Click to expand...

Thanks Yooper! Of course this could be the mild concussion talking.

I am pretty much there as well. Thankfully, I just cleaned a whole tub of bottles and am about to turn a Homerbucket into a bottling bucket. Hmmm, orange dye

The recipe was 6lbs of DME and 1lb of grain mix, so I can't even tell you the actual recipe. A maltier porter doesn't sound that bad to me.

Thanks again!

In the future, don't bother with throwing more and more dry yeast in. I've found that racking to secondary with a tiny bit of splashing will introduce a healthy amount of oxygen, which will help the yeast finish. I feel that most of the time people don't oxygenate nearly enough, so this step can really help with getting those last few points ticked off.