Crystal malts and high FG's

Hi all,
A friend of mine recently made the following recipe, but it didn't ferment down less than 1030 (very sickly sweet). the OG was 1058.

5,250 kilos of pale ale;
500g of
melanoidina;
400g of carared;
300g of caramber;
300g of cararoma;
100g of chocolate. malt
scottish 1728 (wyeast) starter made from slurry
mashed at 64-67c
fermented at 18-20c
everything followed the due course as per normal so I was thinking theres a lot of crystal malt in there, what do you guys think . Thanks Ian

Well, 1728 isn't a great attenuator to begin with. 1600g of crystal/specialty in 6kg of malt is about 25% of the grist. IMO that's way too high. I keep my crystal malts under 15%, regardless of recipe.

Still I would expect better attenuation than 48%. Maybe the yeast slurry wasn't as viable as you thought it was. Maybe your starter was too small, the yeast too stressed, and they flocculated too early.

Try rousing the yeast to get it back in suspension and see if that helps. If it doesn't, make a 2L starter of a more attenuative yeast and pitch that in there.

5,250 kilos of pale ale

whoa

what temp did he mash at, and how much yeast did he use, and did he oxygenate the wort?
with that much base malt, that little bit of specialty malts didn't hurt the attenuation

I assumed he used 5250g. 5250 kilos is like 11,000 pounds. I assume he wasn't making a 25kL batch.

In other countries, they sometimes use a comma for a decimal place.

Nateo.yes i think it was a mixture of the heavy cristal malts and as you say maybe the slurry was a little under viable, although the starter my friend had made did seem to have generated a fair amount of slurry.so he's roused it and it seems to have made a bit more foam on top.Iv'e used this yeast before and it always finishes at 1015 which is fine for me .
Old brew, 64-67c mash, areated yes, he had a fair bit, say 6 tbsp of slurry in there
I dont really worry if it finishes high as I blend with another but my friend dosent have kegs so its a bit more of a problem i think he needs to scale down the cristal malts .
Oh another thing he did have the hairbrain idea of putting the wort in a foodsafe polythene sack of 30 Litres and placing that inside the carboy ( i dont know what he was trying to acheive, but assures me that he areated before closing up the sack.
lets see how it progresses
thanks Ian

huum Yes that was 5250g haha

yeah.. that sounds a lot better
I used food grade trash can liners and fermented inside the roughneck trash cans before. When done just throw the liner away. Expensive to use all the time though.
He's going to have a hard time removing the bag, if the're the small mouth carboys

yeah it's not really a carboy more like a food grade plastic churn
looks like this
http://picasaweb.google.com/iasquith7/Album#5534324200247080690

he will be fine. no mess or worry about bacteria in scratches in the plastic, or what was in it before he used it

I dont know what was in it before, maybe he doesn't, but anyhow now he's taken the wort out of the bag and refilled the tub to rouse it a bit . I dont know why he wanted to use the bag in the first place, maybe worries about the lid sealing or scratches and stuff oh well I hope he's cleaned it well .

I open fermented many of brews with no problems. Brewers worry too much sometimes!