Scotch Ale, slightly wee heavy

Hey guys, bran new here but I've been lurking for a bit. My girlfriend and I just started our first brew together about 11 days ago. We started out with a brewers best scottish ale kit that only came with 3.3 lbs of amber LME and 1.1 lbs of DME. We decided to add another 6.6 lbs of amber LME of the same brand to add some alcohol and flavor (which I now know that a starter would have made a world's of difference). The kit came with the standard nottingham wyeast in a packet.

Ok, so now for the questions. I just racked it into the secondary on day eleven. The starting OG was at 1.068 and the reading today was around 1.028. Temperature has always been between 70 and 71F. I plan on waiting a few weeks to bottle, however I'm wondering if the gravity remains at 1.028 would it be too high to bottle? Or does this even matter after three weeks? And if so, could I possibly use less priming sugar to supplement the unfinished fermentation? Sorry if this has been covered, tried to run a search but couldn't get an exact answer to my specific batch. So far the scotch ale has an awesome taste without any sweetness.

1.028 would be way too high for me to consider bottling. Continue taking gravity readings to see if it keeps droping. If it is stalled at 1.028 I would repitch more yeast.

What kind of yeast did you use? When you pitched the yeast did you use a starter? Most yeasts can handle 1.060, but anything higher than that there could be issues. I've gotten into the habit of always using a starter nowadays.

I bottled a amber ale once that was stalled @ 1.024. It never carbonated properly and it was kind of like watery syrup coming out of the bottle.

They'll tell you around here to wait for the gravity to level for around 3 days before you think of bottling or secondary. However, I think you're in kind of a unique situation because you may have moved to a secondary too soon. If you didn't make a starter, you might have been asking a lot of 1 packet of yeast with a gravity of .068.

Beercalculus quotes your FG at 1.020, so it shouldn't have too much further to go. Try to wait until it levels off before you go to a secondary next time.

You won't want to bottle until it levels off because I don't think there's much of a calculation for how much carbonation comes from X gravity points, and you don't know how much further it will drop. So go with normal priming after it drops.

Other than that, hope the beer comes out nice! (I'm pretty new too, so hopefully I'm not telling lies here)

I'm wondering if it would be worth making a starter and adding that into the secondary. As for the yeast, I used 11g of nottingham brewing yeast by danstar. I wish that I had made a starter to begin with! Oh well, there's always next time if it doesn't finish correctly.

Nottingham is a pretty robust yeast. I'd expect it will keep chugging along just fine if you just let it.

You don't make a starter with dry yeast. You just pitch more dry yeast if necessary. Read up about how to rehydrate dry yeast if you want to improve its performance.

I've pitched Nottingham on 1.065 beers with zero trouble. I wouldn't be scared. I'd be patient. Let the yeast do it's job.

I don't mind waiting, but I'm feeling like the fermentation could possibly be stuck. The last 4 days have been reading at the same 1.028. I tried giving it a few swirls here and there without any luck. I don't mind a wait if it ensures that my bottles don't turn into grenades! However, would it be wise to add a pinch of rehydrated yeast into the secondary IF it's truly a stuck fermentation? Or would this just pickle the yeast in alcohol? Either way, I plan on keeping it in the secondary for at least three more weeks. By the way, thanks for the quick input guys!

A little bit of re-pitched yeast usually won't do the trick. Even a decent sized starter isn't enough. There's ways to re-start a stuck fermentation, but it's not worth talking about right now. 11 or 12 days into a ferment is wayyyyy too early to call a 'stuck' fermentation.

I'd recommend making sure the carboy is sitting in a nice & warm place - 65 to 70 degrees - and come back in 3 weeks if your gravity still hasn't moved & then ask how to "unstick" it.

Trying to "fix" a stuck fermentation, before you really know it's stuck, is usually a waste of time & effort. It might cause more problems than it will ever fix.

I was in a similar situation once when I moved to a secondary too quickly. The gravity took forever to drop, but it did drop. You just have to remember that you moved it off a big cake of yeast, so now you only have the yeast in suspension. Like XXguy said, come back in 3 weeks.

Awesome. I'll let it sit for a while. Thanks guys!

+1 to what's already been said. as a side note, if you started with 5gallons in the fermenter, your OG was actually more like 1.081. I'm guessing you topped off with water which would have lead to the mis-reading as wort and water are difficult to mix well enough to get an accurate reading.