Last two beers dis not ferment out

Could it be the hot temp lately? I don't have a controlled environment to ferment in. Can I dose them with another batch of yeast? Both stalled around half way to desired fg.

Kluxen said:

Could it be the hot temp lately? I don't have a controlled environment to ferment in. Can I dose them with another batch of yeast? Both stalled around half way to desired fg.

Click to expand...

Heat would make them ferment more strongly. How are you measuring gravity? All-grain or extract? Recipes? Starter or no?

Need MOAR info

All grain, with starters. Beers are black ipa and cream ale. Both with 1056. Both had vigorous fermentations initially. I recently switched to a spectrometer from a hydrometer. I calibrated it. Could it be off? Never had a problem before.

Kluxen said:

All grain, with starters. Beers are black ipa and cream ale. Both with 1056. Both had vigorous fermentations initially. I recently switched to a spectrometer from a hydrometer. I calibrated it. Could it be off? Never had a problem before.

Click to expand...

A refractometer? Are you correcting for alcohol in the beer?

Yeah, one of those things. How do I correct for alcohol?

Kluxen said:

Yeah, one of those things. How do I correct for alcohol?

Click to expand...

Try an online calculator like this one.

You have to correct for the presence of alcohol in solution. I bet your beers finished just fine.

I'm a little confused, because my refractometer reads both brix and grav. My og was 1.049 and my fg is 1.024 for the cream ale. That is not fully fermented. But if I go by brix and run it through the calculator you provided I am money. What am I missing.

You go by brix and correct it to specific gravity with alcohol present. It measures refracted light so it doesn't matter what the scale is named it still needs to be corrected for alcohol.

The initial reading for Brix is correct. The SG next to it is a correct calculation. Once fermentation begins and alcohol is present, the SG readout is useless. So is the Brix reading unless you convert. You must know the original Brix reading. When you take a new reading you must then compensate for the presence of alcohol using a chart like the one mentioned above.

Example: Say your original Brix reading was 15. That's a SG of 1.062. Let's say your final reading is 8 Brix. If you don't convert, 8 Brix = 1.032. You would think your beer has stalled and must suck! But if you start with 15 Brix and finish with 8 Brix your finished gravity is actually 1.013...

Does it taste sweet? Forget math, use your senses, then see if the math matches. We get too hung up I. The tech and forget our own built in hydrometers.

Thanks for the clarification. It tastes like beer, you know, with out co2. Stream stream cream ale is carbing up in the kegerator as we speak.