Stuck Ferment on Baltic Porter

Okay, I got in over my head with this beer. This was my first attempt at a lager, and it had a 1.096 starting grav. Well, it's been fermenting for 6 weeks, and has been stuck at about 1.04 for the past 4.

I have repitched yeast, shaken, given it time, and it's now warming up a bit more. I'm trying to figure out what to do to salvage this guy.

I'm kind of thinking pitching an extra half pound of sugar and a starter of some champagne yeast to finish it off.


Malt bill was roughly:

6.6# Munich LME
3.3# Pilsener LME
3# Munich Malt
2# Pils Malt
2# assorted specialty malts (Crystal, Chocolate, etc.)

Fermented with a starter of WLP885. A couple weeks later, I threw in another starter of WLP885, but that appears to have had no effect.


Alternately, maybe I brew another, lighter porter and blend the two to balance the cloying sweetness this one has. Or something like that.

Two questions, you mashed your grains right? What temp? Two lbs of crystal/specialty can really raise your final gravity

Do a Diacetyl Rest. Bring the fermentation temp up to ~65-70, swirl it a bit, leave it for 1-3 days, let the yeasties wake up, lower the temp back down to 50-55 so they can finish their work.

Well, the weather's warming up now. I'll let a bit more warm air into the closet their in and agitate for the next couple days.

As for mash, I kept it pretty well at ~152* for 90minutes. There was a bit of fluctuation in that temp, but I kept it within 4* of my target temp at all times, and generally pretty close to it.

Yeah, there's a lot of specialty grains (closer to 1 3/4#), but there's just a ton of malt in there. I kind of expected this guy to finish around 1.020-1.026, but 1.04+ is just way to high, and it is cloyingly sweet.