Stuck Need Help

this is a kit, porter with some steeped grains. it says fg should be 1.014, hydro has read 1.020 for three days. og was 1.042, has been in primary for 8 days. what should i do next? i need the primary, can i just rack it to secondary for a few weeks? do i need to pitch more yeast? if so do i stirr the primary again? or would steeping grains cause this reading? kinda at a loss here, please help!!!

was that your measured OG? what did the recipe say the OG would be? I want to make sure, cuz its easy for an extract kit's OG to read wrong if you only boiled a couple gallons and then added water to get 5 gallons.

otherwise, if 1.042 was the recipe's estimated OG, then you're barely above 50% attenuation.
don't pitch yeast yet (and FYI if you had to, you would not stir very hard...just gentle...don't splash the beer once primary has started).

is your fermenter cold? what's the temp on it?

its the og for the recipe, i didn't take one at the start. temp been 68 degrees the whole time. safbrew-33 yeast. 6 1/2 gal. bucket and when i removed the lid its been right at the top. rehydro the yeast, started up fast. fermented 24 hours hard, slowed over the next day, then quit. boiled 2 gallon and poured into 3. if it makes a difference added lme and dme at 30 min and 15 min on 60 min boil. total ingredients: 3.3 pounds lme, 2 pounds dme, 8 oz. malto-dextrin, 6 oz. chocolate grain malt.

talked with my lhbs today, and he said that sounds ok to him. but it still way off fg. dont want bottle bombs later.

If you need the primary, after 8 days I don't see any problems racking to a secondary for a couple weeks. Hydro the same for three days? If I have good activity for a few days like you did, I'd rack to a secondary after a week.

can you rack to secondary?

been three more days still at 1.020, so i racked to secondary. over 1 inch of trub in bottom of bucket. beer looked good, smelled good, tasted ok. now if the gravity dosen't fall to where it should be on recipe book that came with kit, am i gonna make bottle bombs in a few weeks when i bottle? and like i said in a earlier post, krausen had been almost to the top of a 6 1/2 gal. bucket, on a 5 gallon batch.

did the kit use any dry malt extract? if so, do you remember if it was brand name laaglander? that stuff is supposedly less fermentable than it should be, which means a little higher FG.

give it 2 weeks in primary and check gravity again. if it hasn't budged, it shouldn't give you bottle bombs.

I'd guess that your beer will end up being just fine. It will just be a bit lower in alcohol.