FG 1.03 5 weeks in fermentor

[bracconiere]

I've already bottled. Can I pop the tops and add it?

lol, probably get an infection, and it wouldn't be worth the trouble....guess your going to be drinking malt syrup....

and +1 to @Lefou , you'd have to dump all the bottles back into a fermenter then add the gluco, to finish fermentation.....

 

[BrewInspector]

And enjoy a highly oxydised beer.

Just leave it and learn from it.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

My thermometer is 12 degrees off. I thought I mashed at 157 but it was surly 169. In Olathe Kansas water boils at 210. My thermometer shows 198 instead or 210. That's has to be why my beer tastes like sugar water and has a FG of 1.03. Dang...

This is kind of an interesting data point. I would think that a beer "mashed" at 169F would not taste like "sugar water" but would likely taste like "grain water". I know that Beta Amylase denature very quickly in any temps above 158F. I am not positive what the upper temp for Alpha Amylase activity is, but one reason for a Mash Out rest at 168F is that this temp will stop/denature all enzyme activity. I am not sure what a mash in the low 160F range would produce.

Mash temps also do not work like 150F = dry, and 158F = sweet...and 166F = really sweet. For the most part, sugars that humans recognize as "sweet" are the sugars that yeast ferment. Lactose is an unfermentable sugar, but if you taste a spoon of lactose it is just barely sweet. There is also some balance that occurs between the sweetness and body that alcohol provides to a lower temp mash beer vs the sweetness and body that the longer sugar chains provide to a higher mash temp beer.

It's definitely not the yeast because I threw a brand new batch of wort mashed at 135 on top of that yeast cake Tuesday and the fermentation has been incredibly active.

I would also say that the fact that the yeast cake fermented another beer does not mean that yeast was not the issue. I am not a yeast expert, but my understanding is that yeast first build up their cell walls/reserves so they have enough "energy" to make through a few generations and consume sugars. Once they run out of oxygen, they switch to an anaerobic cycle where they produce alcohol and CO2 (and you start to see bubbling in the airlock). One cause of a stuck fermentation is that the yeast switched to the anaerobic phase too early and they did not have the reserves needed, and they dropped dormant before consuming all available sugars. These yeast are still healthy and could ferment another batch of beer (especially if over pitched like would happen with reusing the entire yeast cake).