Barleywine FG 1.028 from 1.100

[comet909]

Just racked to secondary after a month in the primary. Yeast was us-05 cake washed and pitched at the appropriate rate according to Mr. Malty.

The sample tasted good. Not sweet or syrupy. The style guidelines show 1.03 as the max FG. But I thought I'd attenuate a little better. Not enough oxygen???

Just wanted to get a few opinions on whether I should leave it or add a little dry yeast to push it the rest of the way.

Thanks.

 

[Bensiff]

That's 72% attenuation isn't bad. However, if you want to know why it stopped there we would have to see your grain bill and mash schedule. If you wanted it to go down farther you would have had to mash for attenuation and kept the unfermentable grains out of the mix. After those considerations I would say, yeast health and amount, nutrients, oxygen, and fermentation temp...I push the temp up (particularly) on big beers after the growth phase when ester production is no longer a concern. At this point adding dry yeast won't help anything, the best bet would have been to leave it on the yeast for a few more months and seen if they were able to chew down a few more points.

I just had the same thing happen with a quad, stopped at 1.030 even after I did everything I said above. Sometimes you just get a fluke that you can't explain. My solution is that I'm going to throw some bugs into it and let them go to town...when my raspberries come in this summer I'm going to add a few pounds to the mix.