Need Advice Lowering FG

Brewed my first extract beer about a month ago. It's been in the primary for the entire fermentation. OG was 1.064. Took two gravity readings three days apart and both were 1.020. I would like to redure the sweetness and hopefully lower the gravity to 1.015. I was planning on bottling on Saturday. If I were to move my fermenter upstairs to warm it up (maybe get a last little bit of yeast activity to lower the FG) do I need to be worried about shaking up the slurry? That would only give the beer about 36 hrs to clear up if any slurry were kicked up. Do I have any other options? Will moving the fermenter to a warmer area of the house help lower the gravity?

Let it warm up and gently "rock" the fermenter to get the yeast going a bit - don't shake it or anything crazy like that. Warming it up to 75 or 80 F would be good at this stage.

Extract batch - high OG - I'm guessing you may be done at 1.020. Anything that happens now, will happen very slowly in any case; so if you want to try for a lower FG, move it upstairs and give it at least another week. But it's probably done.

That's not a flaw, btw. I know you "want" it lower, but once it's bottled and carbed you will enjoy it just fine. Not so much of a "stuck fermentation" as it is a "stuck expectation".

Do what they did on Brew Masters when they were worried about the 120.

Try to make a yeast starter out of some of it. See if the SG of the 'starter' changes. If not, you are out of fermentables.

Yes warm it up and agitate it a bit and leave it for another week before taking another reading. Yhen put it out in the cold for 2-3 days to clear it up. That is what I would do at any rate. Good luck!

one issue I see with extending out another week is that I dry hopped last week. If I wait another week, may be too much with the dry hops. Is there a chance that after priming, it would get sweeter?

dgoldb1 said:

Is there a chance that after priming, it would get sweeter?

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No, the sugars you add to prime are very fermentable asn the yeast will eat them.

Just don't do what another guy just did and use 1.5 pounds of sugar when doing it.

What was the yeast? Windsor, Coopers standard, Muntons standard. All of these are low attenuators. Use of a higher attenuating yeast may help bring it down lower.

I use a lot of extract and don't have any attenuation problems. I'm starting to think a lot of these issues are due to the crappy (oops, I mean low attenuating) yeasts supplied with extract kits.

Yeast was White Labs wlp007 with a 1500ml starter on a stir plate.

I guess going from 1.064 to 1.020 for my first brew isn't too bad, is it?

dgoldb1 said:

one issue I see with extending out another week is that I dry hopped last week. If I wait another week, may be too much with the dry hops. Is there a chance that after priming, it would get sweeter?

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Sweeter, nope. But dry hopping 2 weeks is no problem in my beer life. I dry hop anywhere between 7 and 14 days routinely. Seriously if you want the yeast to work it all out give it more time and up the temperature. If you are in a rush finish and drink the beer and do it again!