Higher than normal final gravity

Hello All,

I just did a 3rd batch of my brown ale but I had some slightly different than normal results.

The recipe has 7 lbs of LME and 2.5 grains ( 1 special B, 0.5 6 row, 0.5 carapils, 0.5 munich for some flavor/practice on steeping-mashing)

Normally I hit about 1.055 OG and 1.006 FG but this time I hit 1.055 and 1.012 respectively. I was fermenting higher than normal, round 74F on Safale (blue packet ) so thats right up near the top end of its range, but I would have expected that to give me a lower FG if anything...

Im just curious if there is anything I should expect with this one. Will a 0.006 difference in FG have that big of an effect on the final outcome.

Any opinions would be appreciated !

Thanks

CoreyG said:

Im just curious if there is anything I should expect with this one. Will a 0.006 difference in FG have that big of an effect on the final outcome.

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It will be slightly less alcoholic, sweeter, and have more body. Finishing around 1.012 is good for many styles, including brown ales. Finishing around 1.006 seems awful low to me.

CoreyG said:

I was fermenting higher than normal, round 74F on Safale (blue packet )

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Was that ambient or beer temp?

If you end up with off flavors, it may be due to this. Others have had bad results fermenting S-04 on the higher end of it's range...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/safale-s-04-fermentation-temp-346741/

Like KISS Brew said though, 1.012 seems like a pretty good place to end.

If I understand correctly this is a beer you've brewed before but this time you added some grain to mash/ steep. If so did you recalculate the recipe to take hat into account? If not that could be your difference in previously expected results.

1012 is good enough, actually much better than 1.006.

KISS Brew said:

It will be slightly less alcoholic, sweeter, and have more body. Finishing around 1.012 is good for many styles, including brown ales. Finishing around 1.006 seems awful low to me.

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Agreed, I like my browns to finish at 1.012-1.018. 1.006 is too dry for most beer styles.

Awesome thanks for the input everyone.

Ya i don't know why my others finished low but hopefully this one will be good.

To answer the various question,
ChessRockwell:I keep my fermenters in water baths and add frozen bottles of water to the bath to cool it in the summer.... so 74 is the water bath temperature which should be very close to the beer temp too....

and duboman: the other batches had a very similar build, just the ratio of light/dark lme and crystal to munich varied... but they both had roughly same amount of lme and grain...