Final gravity 1.057?

I attempted a strong barley. The O.G. was 1.141, and now its at 1.057 almost 4 months later. I used safale-05, and added some campaign yeast when the fermentation slowed.

So my question is, is 1.057 as low as it's going to get? It taste great but has the consistency of cough syrup.

what was your recipe?

strat_thru_marshall said:

what was your recipe?

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I didn't really write it all down. It was the only first 5 gallons from the mash, the rest of the mash went into a second pail ale(which turned out great). After that i beefed it up with DME. It was made from mostly 2 Row pale malt, some munich and biscuit malt. 7 oz of cascade hops in the boil, and 3 in the secondary.

Add corn sugar and champagne yeast?

klyph said:

Add corn sugar and champagne yeast?

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No corn sugar. should i have?

Whoa, that's a high OG! If it went from 1.141 to 1.057, you got 11% ABV! I can't imagine how to get anything else out of it. Maybe a starter of champagne yeast would get a few more points out of it, or if you brewed another beer with a high gravity/high ABV yeast and used the yeast cake from it, you could possibly get a it a tiny bit lower.

Well, now you've learned not to waste your time with brews that will naturally finish at a gravity that makes them taste like cough syrup. 1.141 is just silly without special fermentation techniques. If you want to brew a beer with any type of drinkability you have to draw the line at about 1.110, unless you want to add a high percentage of simple sugar (which, again, you can argue will affect drinkability).

Consider it a learning experience.

If it was me and I REALLY wanted to fix it, I'd brew up a similar batch at a much lower gravity (maybe like 1.080) with about 20% simple sugar, ferment it out then blend the two batches together.

If you're in a big hurry, buy a 1/6BBL of a really dry IPA or APA (maybe SNPA?) and blend with the commercial brew.

IMO champagne yeast won't get you where you want.

malador said:

No corn sugar. should i have?

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yes. anything that high gravity needs simple sugars to get anywhere near dry. How much yeast did you pitch into this beast initially?

According to Mr. Malty's Calculator you should have pitched about 27g of dry yeast, which works out to 2.3 of the 11.5g packets. Given rough numbers I've seen for this yeast attenuation, I think the lowest FG you should expect to get out of this would be around 1.030-1.035. Clearly you're still a ways from that. But I'd expect that if you underpitched. You might push it down a bit more with fresh (high alcohol tolerance) yeast. Or, like others said, blend it with a really thin dry pale ale.

You might try making a big starter of wlp099 (super high gravity ale) and pitching it at high kreusen. I'd probably rack off of all the other yeast and sediment first though.

also, maybe bump the temp up to 70 or 71 to keep everything active?

strat_thru_marshall said:

yes. anything that high gravity needs simple sugars to get anywhere near dry. How much yeast did you pitch into this beast initially?

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I put it onto a brown ale yeast cake. It took of pretty well.

I'm not going to write it off as a waste yet. I really like the taste. It's just a touch too thick, maybe carbonation it will help with that. Since i know it's done, I put it into a keg this morning. I'll let you know how it turns out. thanks for all your help.

is diluting with water an option?

motobrewer said:

is diluting with water an option?

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I'm sure i could. I'll think about diluting it with water/beer after i see what it taste like carbonated.