Mystery ale - final gravity too high?

[rockout]

We took all our extra lying-around ingrdients and threw them together, starting gravity was 1.087. (If you're interested, it was 5.15# of DME plus 3.3# of Liquid Gold barley malt).

I took a quick reading when I transferred to secondary 10 days later, gravity was 1.035. That was a month ago.

Took a reading yesterday and today (bottling day), and it was, guess what.... 1.035. At least it was consistent.

What's this gonna do to my bottles? Am I in trouble? Is the beer going to suck? We're bottling pretty soon. Should I use less sugar in the bottling process? Normally I use 3/4 cup for my 5 gallons of brew.

 

[woollybugger2]

How old was the LME?

 

[HillbillyDeluxe]

yeast type? Thats important. And that was a big gravity at the OG. Might be that its that high. Make sure you test it at the same temp or that your really good at offsetting.

 

[rockout]

Yeah, it was tested at the same temp. The LME was probably 1 year old, maybe slightly older. And we used a dry yeast packet.

 

[carnevoodoo]

I think the biggest issue is that you took it off the yeast too quickly. I would repitch and see if you can get it down further.

 

[oswiu]

I think the biggest issue is that you took it off the yeast too quickly. I would repitch and see if you can get it down further.

+1 to this. I've had a 1.064 beer in the primary for over two weeks. Its gravity is 1.018 and still dropping. Depending on the yeast strain, gravity of wort and ferment temperature, it can take well over 10 days for fermentation to be complete.

As carnevoodoo said, your best bet is probably to repitch with some new yeast and take regular gravity readings.

And not to worry... The resulting beer will probably still be pretty good stuff