Help! Very high FG?

Hey so I bottled a batch today it was intended to be an IPA, I loosely followed a recipe for a Racer 5 extract Clone but due to available ingredients I had to change some things up. Anyway on brew day (March 15th) the OG was 1.135--MUCH higher than it was supposed to be. I was aiming for 1.070-1.080 something like that. I must have estimated the steeping grains totally wrong or something.
March 31st I took another reading: 1.070. A big jump but still seemed pretty high. Racked to secondary and added hops.
April 5th (today) I bottled and took another reading and it didn't move at all, still 1.070.

The beer tastes really sweet, way too sweet for what I was going for. It seems like the yeast did their job but unfortunately the OG was just really high. I would really like to learn from this to see if I could have done something differently? I'm hoping the sweetness will mellow out after it carbs up.

Just for my own understanding, is the sweetness of the beer directly related to the FG? And is it bad to have a high FG as long as the fermentation took place? I think I'm looking at an ABV of about 8.5% so I'm not worried about that.

Please educate me!

Jeremy

I'd start by posting your exact recipe. If you followed an extract recipe its hard to imagine missing OG by 40pts.

Yeah you'll need to post your recipe because something doesn't seem right on your OG. Steeping grains will add next to no fermentable sugars (at most .004 I would think and that's pushing it) so that wouldn't account for the extremely high OG.

Also before racking it to the secondary did you take a couple of readings a 2-3 days apart to make sure fermentation was done? If it wasn't fully fermented you have have stalled it out by racking it.

Also have you calibrated yoru hydrometer to make sure you are getting proper readings? What temp did you take the readings? To calibrate your hydrometer all you have to do is fill your test tube up with tap water and place your hydrometer in it; it should read 1.000 at around 60F (at least that is optimal temp for my hydrometer) so you might need to correct for temp. If it doesn't read 1.000 then you'll need to take that into account.

Here is my recipe:

8 lbs liquid malt extract
12 oz corn sugar

Grains:
1.5lbs american wheat
.33 lbs 2-row
.66 lbs crystal malt 20l
.33 lbs carapils

Hops:
.5oz chinook 90 minute
1.7oz cascade 60 minute
.7 oz centennial dry hop for 5 days in secondary
.3oz cascade dry hop for 5 days in secondary

Yeast: safale us-05


Just checked the hydrometer and it is reading spot on.

And unfortunately I didn't take readings a few days apart. I should know better but after 2 full weeks I was pretty sure it was done plus I wasn't seeing any sort of activity the last several days.

Based on the recipe the OG should be about 1.072 and you got a high reading due to a poor mix of top off water and wort.

If the beer tasted sweet at your FG reading and the gravity was really still that high it should have never been bottled.

Bottle bombs are a big concern here and they should all be placed in some sort of covered tub to protect you and anyone else in the event they explode. After a few days I would highly suggest you uncap to relieve pressure and you'll probably have to do that several times over a couple weeks if you want to try and salvage any of the beer/(


Sent from the Commune

What size boil did you do? Did you top off to a full 5 gallons? Did you rehydrate your yeast prior to pitching?

P.S. Even if you did rehydrate a OG that high (1.135) would require 2.5 packs of US-05 to chew threw the stuff you made! If your measurements are all correct that is likely why it ended at 1.070.

If intended OG was 1.070 and it was an extract brew, assuming all volumes are correct (this is a 5 or 5.5 gallon batch, right?), and FG is at 1.070, it would appear that no fermentation took place at all.

Is there any evidence that it fermented? Krausen ring? Does the sweet beer taste like beer or unfermented wort?

This was a 5 gallon batch. Full boil. I did end up topping with about a quart. OG measurement said 1.1.35

I rehydrated the yeast before I added it.


So what should I do at this point? Is it crazy to crack them all open, carefully pour back in the fermenter and pitch some more yeast? I know that creates a lot of risk of oxidation but is that worse than super sweet beer that might explode?

And yes LOTS of fermentation activity, big thick krausen, tons of movement inside fermenter, and the air lock was bubbling like mad. Even blew off once.

Hmmm. (scratches head)

Okay, so fermentation definitely happened. Good. The thing is that there's a finite amount of gravity points available, especially with it being an extract brew. How sure are you of your volumes? Are you sure you started with 8 lbs of extract?

A brew that should be 1.072 at 5g would have to be reduced down to 2.66g to end up with an OG of 1.135. Since you only added about a quart of top off water, a bad OG reading due to a lack of mixing is possible, but it doesn't explain such a large discrepancy.

It really comes down to how much hassle you want to incur. You could certainly try and pour them out carefully, pitch yeast and allow to fully ferment with the understanding that you may have oxidized beer in the end or do the capping thing repeatedly.


Sent from the Commune

I suppose the amount of extract I put in could be wrong. I was given the extract from another home brewer and I just went by the numbers that the HBS wrote on the jars.
I'm pretty positive on my volumes, although I did only have 4.5 gallons in the bottling bucket.

And now I'm trying to remember if I took the gravity reading from the kettle BEFORE I topped off or not. Even still that shouldn't have made a big difference right?

Right now I'm leaning towards trying to re-ferment...any thoughts on this?

Yeah, with a top off amount that small, we're only talking a few points. My guess is that you had quite a bit more extract than you thought. I don't know how else you could have been off by 50 points.

Restarting fermentation should be possible. Oxidation could very well be an issue, but if it's still at 1.070, I would think that any oxygen introduced by pouring the beer out of the bottles would be consumed by the yeast. Since it's pretty much undrinkable at this point, I'd probably pick up some WLP090 and make a 1L starter. After the starter has had about 6 hours to work, carefully pour the beer back into the fermentor and pitch your starter and see what happens. At this point, I don't think you have much to lose besides the cost of more yeast and some DME to make a starter.

An uncooled hydrometer reading of a 1.07x wort would read in the 1.115 range. I may have missed it, but did you ever answer the question of what temperature your sample was at when you took your OG hydro reading?

Isn't it the other way around? The warmer the wort/beer, the lower the reading?

LLBeanJ said:

Isn't it the other way around? The warmer the wort/beer, the lower the reading?

Click to expand...

No. The warmer the wort the higher the gravity. Check it out here:
http://www.brewersfriend.com/hydrometer-temp/

stpug said:

No. The warmer the wort the higher the gravity. Check it out here:

http://www.brewersfriend.com/hydrometer-temp/

Click to expand...

Nope, sorry, the warmer the wort the lower the reading, as the wort cools the density/concentration increase resulting in an increase in the gravity reading


Sent from the Commune

stpug said:

No. The warmer the wort the higher the gravity. Check it out here:
http://www.brewersfriend.com/hydrometer-temp/

Click to expand...

You're correct that the warmer the wort is, the higher the actual gravity than what the hydrometer indicates. What you were talking about earlier, though, is the possibility that he was getting a erroneously high reading due to the wort being uncooled. In actuality, uncooled wort would give an erroneously low reading.

Ok I'll try repitching. Do I need the WLP090? I have a few packs of safale-us05 and some DME on hand if I can use that.

No, you don't need WLP090... US-05 will be better than nothing. The idea is to get the starter up to high krausen, meaning the yeast are in full-on fermentation mode and pitch at that time. Hopefully, they'll go to town and bring that gravity down to a reasonable level. Keep in mind that since you started so high, there's a good chance that the best you'll be able to do with that yeast is the high-20s, maybe even low-30s, especially considering the amount of alcohol that is already present. That's why I suggested a robust strain like WLP090 as it can handle the alcohol and it attenuates very well.

LLBeanJ said:

You're correct that the warmer the wort is, the higher the actual gravity than what the hydrometer indicates. What you were talking about earlier, though, is the possibility that he was getting a erroneously high reading due to the wort being uncooled. In actuality, uncooled wort would give an erroneously low reading.

Click to expand...

You, sir, are correct!

I'll tell ya. Sometimes, math is haaard.

Thanks for catching that.