Am I on track????? Bourbon Berrel Stout

[TheMinionsThree]

oops!! Porter not stout.

I am new to this and did not get the result I expected so I wanted to check with the experts here.

Extract Kit - NB Bourbon Barrel Porter - followed all instructions to the letter.

OG = 1.082 (kits says it should have been 1.065) tested w/ refrac
Pitched White Labs Edinburgh WLP028 qty. 2 -grown in 2L starter via stirplate
Lots of activity, some blow-off, in primary for 12 days, moved to secondary.
SG in secondary = 1.044
With these numbers, looking at ~5.3 ABV not accounting for bourbon add later.

Taste: tad sour not sweet (leads me to think sugar is gone)

Concerns:
Feel like my SG after primary should have been lower for a porter like this. High OG = high sugar = higher ABV (right?).

Do I need to do anything? Re-pitch in secondary? Will it continue to drop more in secondary?

noticed lots of black specs left over yeast cake in primary. like specialty grain bag let lot of grain "dust" out. This would increase OG correct? because all the OG measure is liquid density?

please provide me some guidance

 

[Agate]

Your initial reading was probably skewed from the top-off water not being mixed in well enough. Those kits are pretty foolproof-- if you added all the fermentables and have the right volume of water, your gravity reading should match the kit. For your final gravity reading, plug in the refractometer values into an online calculator... The presence of alcohol skews the readings after fermentation and a refractometer is not reliable. Northern brewer has a calculator on their website.

Good luck!

 

[TheMinionsThree]

Thx. Used the calculation from NB. Says current grav is 1.021 abv is 7.327. That sound more correct. Did not know alcohol affected refractometer reading

 

[microbusbrewery]

Thx. Used the calculation from NB. Says current grav is 1.021 abv is 7.327. That sound more correct. Did not know alcohol affected refractometer reading

Yeah, ethanol has a different refractive index, so once fermentation starts you have to adjust the reading to account for it.

One recommendation, don't transfer to secondary unless your racking on to fruit or dry hopping or something along those lines. It's normally not needed and by doing so you just reduced the amount of yeast that are available to finish up fermentation.

 

[TheMinionsThree]

Micro- Thx for suggestion & info. I am new to this so I was just following the recipe instructions

 

[Agate]

When I made this kit, it finished at 1.024, so you're right there. Depending on how you add the oak cubes, you might want to put it in secondary. This is one where it might make sense to use a secondary. I added the cubes and bourbon and let it go for a couple weeks. Came out nice and clean.