Re-pitch or Warm Up?

I brewed my first Belgian Quad about a month or so ago and the fermentation took off quickly but I think the high gravity really strained the yeast and it has since slowed down but still showing signs of fermentation. It's been in "secondary" for a few weeks but the gravity is still much higher than I would like it. I'm considering a couple options on bringing down the SG:

Re-pitch: I'm thinking of re-pitching a partial packet of yeast in stages. The volume is all the way to the bottom of the BB neck and I'm thinking of splitting the dry yeast into 1/4 or 1/8 and adding to the secondary.

Warm it up: I'm also considering putting it into a 75-80 degree bathtub full of water. It's still showing signs of fermentation so I think there's still some viable yeast in there.

What do you guys think? Maybe warm it up first, then re-pitch if it doesn't work?

Have you taken a hydro reading yet????

The only way to truly know what is going on in your fermenter is with your hydrometer. Like I said here in my blog, which I encourage you to read, Think evaluation before action you sure as HELL wouldn't want a doctor to start cutting on you unless he used the proper diagnostic instuments like x-rays first, right? You wouldn't want him to just take a look in your eyes briefly and say "I'm cutting into your chest first thing in the morning." You would want them to use the right diagnostic tools before the slice and dice, right? You'd cry malpractice, I would hope, if they didn't say they were sending you for an MRI and other things before going in.....

Repitching, or doing anything else befor taking a hydrometer reading is tantamount to the same thing...If you are going by your airlcok, remember,

Airlock bubbling, lack of airlock bubbling, stopped airlock bubbling, fast airlock bubbling, slow airlcok bubbling, heavy metal airlcok bubbling, or disco airlock bubbling really is not an indicator of what is happening to your beer. It is NOT a fermentation gauge, it is a valve to release excess pressure, excess CO2...NOT AN ACCURATE INSTRUMENT....

Fermentation is not always "dynamic," just because you don't SEE anything happenning, doesn't mean that anything's wrong, and also doesn't mean that the yeast are still not working dilligantly away, doing what they've been doing for over 4,000 years....

So, really, until you take a reading...all you, or any of us can do is conjecture...it may be stuck..or it may be done...but you won't know without a grav reading.

Revvy, I've taken a few hydro readings since racking to secondary and it is slowly, slowly coming down. I'm just worried about letting all that yeast strain itself over the few months I'm going to keep it aging and it not coming back to life when I go to bottle it. That's why I thought about re-pitching 1/8 or 1/4 a packet at a time over the course of a couple months just to bring it down to where I want it and have some left over to add to the bottling bucket when I go to bottle.

I have to admit, I haven't taken a reading in the last week or so but I'm sure it's not much below where it was the last time I checked.

so you are saying you rached the beer to secondary BEFORE it was done?????

THat's the problem, you rushed a big beer of the yeast...so I'm not surprised it tuckered out..I can't say this to people enough..the secondary is a clearing tank...you do not rack it til it's reached terminal gravity. In other words...TILL IT IS DONE FERMENTING.

Especially a big beer...why the heck did you move it to secondary before it was done?

If it is that high, then more than likey YOU WILL have to re-pitch...you took it away from the yeast before they had a chance to finsih their job,

You know, many of us don't even secondary unless we are adding fruit, dry hopping, adding ok, or bulk aging...we leave our beers alone and leave them for 3-4 weeks in primary....don;t be so quick to rush a beer, especially one that hasn't finished fermenting, off the yeast cake.

ANd you especially don;t rack a beer to secondary, until it is done fermenting first......

Revvy, thanks for the feedback. I know I didn't follow my normal process for testing and then racking. This was my 1st of like 3 or 4 kits I bought at once and my hydrometer broke when racking it from the brew kettle into primary. My bad for not just breaking down and eating the cost of another hydrometer to ensure proper procedures are followed. Knowing that standard procedures were not followed, I was considering what my options are moving forward. I'm leaning towards putting it into a 70, 75+ degree bathtub to maybe bring the yeast back to life and finish off the fermentables. It's not static, the hydro readings are slowly dropping so I think this might trigger increased activity from the yeast already in there. If that doesn't work, then I think I'm forced to just re-pitch.

I still might add a partial packet of yeast when bottling but that's another topic....

It's okay,,,but in the future..if you don't have a hydrometer, then wait it out...let the yeast do their thing.....That's why many of us leave our beers in primary for a month, OR wait 14 days before racking...that way we give our yeast plenty of time to do their thing....there is abosolutely no harm in waiting..even palmer says so...in fact your beer will thank you for it....

We forget this simple fact...We are not making koolaid, or chocolate quick, just stirring in and having instant gratification...when you pitch yeast, you are dealing with living micro-organisms...and they have their own timetable, and their own agenda...and it usually is different from most of you "young-un's" with your video on demand and text messaging....

In Mr Wizard's colum in BYO this month he made an interesting analogy about brewing and baking....He said that egg timers are all well and good in the baking process but they only provide a "rule of thumb" as to when something is ready...recipes, oven types, heck even atmospheric conditions, STILL have more bearing on when a cake is ready than the time it says it will be done in the cook book. You STILL have to stick a toothpick in the center and pull it out to see if truly the cake is ready.....otherwise you may end up with a raw cake....

Not too different from our beers....We can have a rough idea when our beer is ready (or use something silly like the 1-2-3 rule (which doesn't factor in things like yeast lag time or even ambient temp during fermentation) and do things to our beer willy nilly....but unless we actually stick "our toothpick" (the hydrometer) in and let it tell us when the yeasties are finished...we too can "f" our beer up.

When I was traveling all the time, my batches sat in primary for weeks at a time and it was easy to brew one day, then the next time I was home, take a reading and either bottle or "secondary". Now that I've stopped traveling, maybe I'm a bit too anxious to get the current beer done and move on to the next. Lessons learned.

I think investing in another primary or two would be a good idea considering how cheap a plastic bucket is. I really like big Belgian beers so if I want one always in the works, I'm going to need multple primaries anyways.

BTW, thanks for posting your stove-top all-grain method. I just recently started AG and with just a small increase in gear, I can brew easily simply. I'm not into all the bells and whistles of gadets and what not so the two pot thing works for me.