First post/brew! Heavy IPA stopped fermenting at 1.035 gravity.

[IanEiderbo]

Hi everyone! I'm Ian. First post, first brew.

Although I'm happy I've finally started brewing my first batch hasn't been totally without question marks.
So I did this IPA: http://www.tastybrew.com/newrcp/detail/451

What the big problem has been is that the gravity seems to have stopped pretty early. The original gravity was 1.080 and it's been sitting in the primary for more than 2 weeks until today.
I've read a lot and I did a few things that I thought would help the yeast continue their work (pumping it around, putting it in a warmer room). I initially had it in the basement which was about 60-65 degrees fahrenheit depending on what time of the day it was. At first it started fermenting like crazy and it didn't stop until after about a week.
The beer is really cloudy and kinda thick (not extremely thick), but it tastes pretty good to be honest. If I let it sit for a while the top of it gets separated from the rest of it.

Today I decided that I would just transfer it to the secondary and add the dry hopping hops since nothing seemed to be happening and just continue through the whole process so that I could do a new brew. Any thoughts on how to go about?

And one last thing! If there is in fact still a whole lot of sugars from the malt and honey in this brew, would adding priming sugar when bottling be unnecessary?

I'd appreciate any help!

 

[IanEiderbo]

Bump! This thread just became visible and had been pushed back a few pages!

 

[Zeal]

The top gets separated? Can you describe?
I'm rather new as well, but I'd let it sit for a while to see if the the Gravity drops at all.
I wouldn't bottle until the gravity drops more, or even all the way to what it's intended.
Wouldn't risk bottle bombs.
Your problem could be many things even water chemistry.

 

[IanEiderbo]

Well, it basically looks like there is a thicker fluid in there as well as a more watery one that gets separated. Could be leftover sugars?

After transfering the beer from the primary to the secondary and adding the dry hops this seems to have disappeared. It doesn't look as cloudy as it did before. Could be that there was so much sediment that all of it didn't settle to the bottom. I don't know. Nothing happened fermentation wise, though, so I decided to rack everything to the secondary. I'll do another gravity reading this week. I don't know.

I might add that we did a miss when brewing. We didn't think about the fact that some water would boil away during the boil. So we didn't have enough wort/very thick wort when we put it in to the carboy. So we boiled a few liters to sanitize it and poured it in to the carboy (still very hot water) afterwards. We then waited until it was cool enough and put the yeast in. Everything went according to the plan until it stopped fermenting after about a week and the gravity showed about 1.035. Tastes good, though.

 

[Zixxer10R]

What temp did you initially ferment at? If you're saying 60-65 was warmish, you might have shocked your yeast and wound up with a stuck fermentation. That recipe was a pretty big brew to begin with, how much yeast did you pitch?

 

[IanEiderbo]

Well, 60-65 was what it initially fermented at. I might have been a bit unclear in my post. Anyways, it was first fermenting very healthy at around 60-65. I then put it in a room inside the house which was about 70-72 to see if the yeast would like that temperature better but nothing really happened.

Is the krausen supposed to reappear if it starts fermenting again? Because it had gone away when I first took it up from the basement and it did not reappear.

No tastes of dyacetyl or any other weird tastes to be found, though!

 

[IanEiderbo]

Bump! I really need your advice. Bottling day is coming up!

 

[Yooper]

What was the OG, and what is the recipe? Exactly the recipe you posted? Some beers, with lots of unfermentables, may not ferment completely. but in this case, I would NOT bottle yet. It sure seems like it should go much lower, although it's hard to tell with amber extract as we don't know how much crystal malt is actually in it.

 

[IanEiderbo]

Ah, well it's not exactly as in this recipe. I mistook the amounts of the extracts so that the amount of light (9 lbs) and amber (4 lbs) we're switched around. So there is more light malt than amber if you see what I mean. The OG was 1.080.

 

[BryceL]

Be sure to check your FG at least a couple of times several days apart to ensure that it is completely done fermenting. You don't want any bottle bombs.