Porter is stuck, what else can I try?

Brewed Ed's Porter on 11/14/09 O.G.=1.067... It started with a massive blowoff, and continued fermenting at 68 deg for almost 2 weeks. To my surprise when I checked the SG 13 days later it was only down to 1.030. I warmed it up to 71, roused the yeast (several times) and let it sit for a week... No change in FG.

Finally yesterday I bottled my pale ale which used the same DME, and same batch of notty as my porter. It went from 1.059 to 1.012 in 3 days, so I figured racking the porter onto the cake would be a sure thing.

I warmed the porter back up to 68 (it had been sitting at 60 deg for about a week) and racked it onto the cake. I started seeing airlock activity within a few hours. The airlock was no longer bubbling when I woke up this morning, and when I took a gravity reading ~30 hours after racking the gravity had only dropped to 1.028.

Is there anything else I can do? I'm sure I aerated it sufficiently, and my technique is pretty consistent at this point, so I can't think of anything that I would have done wrong... Especially when a beer I made 6 days later using the same ingredients attenuated so well. This was a very expensive brew, and right now I have a very very sweet, high calorie, medium alcohol porter

Here is the recipe:
6.5 lb DME
1.5 lb chocolate
0.5 lb flaked barley
.25 lb black patent
.06 lb roasted barley
0.5 lb malto-dextrine
11g Nottingham

Sometimes they stick and you can try a bazillion things.

The best bet is to brew another batch of something and when it is done, rack the porter back onto that yeast cake.

Simply adding another smack pack or pack of nottingham isn't enough to do it.

There are some threads on here in regards to Nottingham specifically. They had a run of bad yeast that wouldn't ferment down all the way. You may have got stuck with some of it.

McKBrew said:

Sometimes they stick and you can try a bazillion things.

The best bet is to brew another batch of something and when it is done, rack the porter back onto that yeast cake.

Simply adding another smack pack or pack of nottingham isn't enough to do it.

There are some threads on here in regards to Nottingham specifically. They had a run of bad yeast that wouldn't ferment down all the way. You may have got stuck with some of it.

Click to expand...

That's exactly what I did. I pitched it onto a yeast cake yesterday that attenuated 79%, and it only dropped .0002. I guess I might be jumping the gun a bit on this one, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it will still be 1.028 when I check again tomorrow.

can try half a teaspoon of AE

Well, it appears that I have been Revy'd. When I took a peak into the closet to check out my new apfelwein the porter was bubbling again at a couple times a minute.

I guess the seal broke sometime after I went to bed last night, and the co2 was leaking around the lid instead of out the airlock. Have I learned my lesson? Probably not.

bkov said:

can try half a teaspoon of AE

Click to expand...

Does Amylase Enzyme have to be added during the mash or will it help on a stuck fermentation at 1.020?

Few people have luck with Amylase Enzyme (aka Beano). It will definitely start breaking down more sugars, but once it gets going about the only way to kill it is to heat it up. This will affect flavor, and if you bottle kill the yeast.

Did it once. Big Mistake.

Amylase Enzyme is different then beano.
AE stops at a certain point depending how much is used. Beano never stops

I stand corrected, had some conflicting information in another thread.

Beano not good.