1.073 to 1.024 then bottled,now what?

My Vanilla Baltic Porter had an OG of 1.073 and went down to 1.024. Being dumb I was like, "oh well" and bottled. My question now is.. what do I do? Do I just wait a couple months and drink it? Or do slowly blend it into future batches?

Dumping is never an option.

Thanks for the help!

not sure I completely understand your "oh well"? Were you expecting/hoping/wanting it to go lower and it didn't? Or are you not sure now if it was done and bottled too soon?

If the former, I would just let it carb up, maybe a age a bit, then drink. It might be a bit on the full/sweet side, but it's what you got right now. You could mess around with blending it with another beer, but since it is already bottled, this will be difficult.

If the latter, you could potentially have bottle bombs on your hand depending on how much priming sugar you added. Did you check the gravity a few times to make sure it was done? Your numbers give you a 67% apparent attenuation, which, though not terrible, is certainly low.

I agree that 1.024 is a bit high for a 1.073 beer, but what was the recipe?

How long did you wait before you bottled it?

Extract or AG? If AG, what was your mash temp?

I thought it would go lower but after three gravity readings at 1.024 I figured it was done but not as low as I wanted. In retrospect I should have repitched or something along those lines.

4 weeks before bottled.

Extract recipe, don't have it in front of me but will post it when I'm done with work.

<youtube>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuv8F4uORA8</youtube>

Anubis said:

My Vanilla Baltic Porter had an OG of 1.073 and went down to 1.024. Being dumb I was like, "oh well" and bottled. My question now is.. what do I do? Do I just wait a couple months and drink it? Or do slowly blend it into future batches?

Dumping is never an option.

Thanks for the help!

Click to expand...

Anubis said:

I thought it would go lower but after three gravity readings at 1.024 I figured it was done but not as low as I wanted. In retrospect I should have repitched or something along those lines.

4 weeks before bottled.

Extract recipe, don't have it in front of me but will post it when I'm done with work.

Click to expand...

Sounds like it was as low as it was going to go if it had been fermenting for 4 weeks. Let it carb up for a few weeks and enjoy your slightly oversweet beer. If it was stuck at 1.024 for that long it's not likely that aging it is going to make it go any lower.

If it wasn't really stuck then you could be in for some bottle bombs. Be careful when opening the first few bottles.

Yeah I don't think it will do that. It had leveled out at 1.024 and after a week it's slightly carbed but only time will tell.

I had a string of high gravity beers go underattenuated. It's very frustrating, and I dumped 3 of them. Not a popular solution, I know, but life is too short to force down less than excellent beer. Anyway, my problems have been gone since I got a stirplate and started pitching big stirred starters. Give it some thought. Probably the biggest impact I've had on the quality of my finished beers, aside from switching to all-grain.