After banging my head against the wall, I finally found this post and solved my issue. Thanks for going through and updating compatibility with PHP7. Good lookin' out.
Honestly, upping your base malt to hit your desired SG is also an option. Not sure why your efficiency might be so low but a super easy way to compensate is to plug that all in to BeerSmith and adjust your base malt based on your gravity. An extra pound or two of base malt is only a couple bucks...
Could also be that the temp of the outside of the carboy is not equal to the liquid inside the carboy. I agree with TennBrewer too, the liquids likely didn't have enough time to fully come into equilibrium with each other.
I tried a Belgian Tripel and a Quad as my second and third batches. My biggest issue was that they didn't ferment out. I would strongly suggest making a yeast starter and investing in the erlenmeyer flask for that now. Belgians need to be well attenuated otherwise they'll be cloying. The...
Just for future reference, shaking the heck out of the carboy does probably slightly risk an infection. And I mean very slightly. But without an oxygenation/aeration system, it's one of the only ways to get the necessary oxygen into your beer so the yeast can eat it up. I do it every time...
I would take the airlock and bung off, shake the heck out of it and repitch some yeast. Could be that there wasn't enough oxygen in the wort when you pitched, and now the yeast have just been chilling in there waiting for some oxygen.
This happened to me a couple months ago, took the bung...
I'm not sure how the orange peel could be moldy if you added it to the boil. That should've sterilized it. From the picture, everything looks fine, krausen looks healthy. Have you calibrated your hydrometer in 68 degree water to make sure you're getting an accurate reading?
I'd say you could just do 17 days in primary, then dry hop for 4 days, then add the second dose of dry hops for another 4 days, then bottle. I think the 17 day secondary is unnecessary.
Or you could just move to secondary after 17 days, and do the dry hopping schedule I mentioned all in...
As mentioned, taking a reading in 2-3 weeks would be fine just make sure everything worked out. I used to not take readings really, like leidermann mentioned, and I realized at a certain point that I no longer had a handle on how my equipment was working, recipe specs, etc. I agree readings...