Adding yeast to secondary

I'm brewing an imperial stout. The OG was 1.108 and the target FG should be 1.021. I pitched two packets of safale 05 and fermentation activity appeared normal. I typically go to secondary after 2 weeks and then keg after two more weeks. I just syphoned to secondary and a gravity reading showed it to be at 1.060 which seems really high. At this point I wouldn't expect it to go too much lower on its own so I was wondering if there are any downsides to throwing another packet of 05 into the secondary? I'm hoping it will allow the yeast to finish taking this stout closer to where it should be.

I appreciate any advice you can give.
-Paul

go for it

paulp said:

I'm brewing an imperial stout. The OG was 1.108 and the target FG should be 1.021. I pitched two packets of safale 05 and fermentation activity appeared normal. I typically go to secondary after 2 weeks and then keg after two more weeks. I just syphoned to secondary and a gravity reading showed it to be at 1.060 which seems really high. At this point I wouldn't expect it to go too much lower on its own so I was wondering if there are any downsides to throwing another packet of 05 into the secondary? I'm hoping it will allow the yeast to finish taking this stout closer to where it should be.

I appreciate any advice you can give.
-Paul

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Assuming the reading was with a hydrometer and not a refractometer that beer needs to ferment further. If it's to be drinkable

Adding ~200 billion yeast cells to the trillions already in the fermentor is likely going to do nothing.

There are a few potential causes but it seems what yeast are left in suspension after you've removed most of your army by racking have crapped out and need more food..

If your sure the SG is not dropping and the reading was taken with a hydrometer the best course of action would be to add amylase.

This amylase will cleave unfermentable sugars into fermentable ones. The yeast there in suspension will take care of it and the SG will get lower.

Adding more yeast will do no harm but it will likely do no good either unless you were to add something like Brett or a champagne yeast that may result in a beer with undesirable characteristics.

I'd go with amylase. It seems to work well for folks.

@paulp , this is an example of why we don't generally go just by the calendar when managing fermentation - for most beers, two weeks primary fermentation makes sense, but for really big beers, it can be quite a bit longer. There is no harm, I think, in pitching new yeast and raising the temp to encourage the yeast to get to work. If its really stalled, Gavin's suggestion to try amylase would be a next step.

In any case, figuring out what happened so you can correct it next time is what you might focus on - why do you have a wort with so much unfermentables in it? Grain bill? Mash temps?

Thanks for all of the advice. I really appreciate it. I'll give it a try and see how it goes.

I disagree with Gavin and Pappers, in that Amylase is the next thing to do. I've never used it, but to my mind it is the Nuclear option - the last thing to do if there is no other option.

First thing to do is to understand what happened to the beer, and then decide what to do from there. Post your recipe and process details, and maybe someone can help figure it out. Maybe it just got cold, or something simple like that.

The beer has 6.5% alcohol at the moment, so it is not going to spoil, so there is no urgency to have to do something today.