Fixing a Stout finishing @ 1.031 FG

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beervoid

Hophead & Pellet Rubber
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Hello everyone I decided to open a separate topic on this.

I recently failed to properly mash a stout and was left with it at 1.031 FG. OG was 1.056 so it's now a thick sweet potion with only 3% or so.

Is there anyway to save this baby?

I was thinking of adding straight burboun to bump up the ABV or adding sugar and yeast.

Any other suggestions are welcome!
 
Could you provide a bit more information?

1. What do you mean you failed to properly mash? (Temps, times, process, etc.)

2. What yeast did you use and did you make a starter?

3. How did you aerate the wort prior to pitching?

4. Have you done anything up until this point to try and kickstart the fermentation?
 
I feel your pain. I'm not sure what happened but i've got a sweet stout that just won't drop below 1.020 and i started at 1.050. Its very sweet. It was supposed to drop to 1.015. I've got the room slightly warmer and I also pitched a old-ish packet of Nottinham thats been in the fridge for a while. Doing that seemed to drop the gravity from 1.022 to 1.020, still waiting to see if it gets any better. Its been 4 weeks since i brewed it.

The basics I've heard for stuck fermentation would be to rock the carboy slightly to stir up some yeast.
Move to slightly warmer room
Repitch with the same yeast or with a clean fermenting yeast to try and clean up the remaining sugars.
 
You can try what @knotquiteawake suggested. If you don't get any results from that, you could

1. Rehydrate some dry yeast with some yeast energizer and pour that in.

or

2. Make a starter and pitch that at high krausen.

Would still be curious to know some more info about what happened on this one
 
Do you want to save it or just mess around with something? What's your goal? I'd likely dump it.

You could brew the same batch and mess it up in the opposite way and then mix the batches.
 
I used 15grams us05 dry yeast, 5 Gallon batch.

It's all grain.. I was aiming for OG 1.066 gravity but im working with a new brewing system and only came till OG 1.056 (needed to dial in the efficiency from 71% to 63%)

All grain bill mashed at 156 and 7 min mash out 168, when I did a pre boil reading and calculated I was not hitting my target (1.041 currently)
the grains where still very sticky so I concluded I needed to sparge (been doing BIAB previously and now moved to a Ace/Klarstein auto brewery)

I heated up about 3 liters of water to 168f to sparge over the grains letting it seep into the pan.

I then boiled it for 1 hour longer to try to get a bit more gravity, effectively giving me 10 gravity points more with a OG of 1.056 after boil.

6.83 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) Bel (3.0 SRM) Grain 1 59.3 %
1.34 lb Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain 2 11.7 %
1.09 lb CHÂTEAU CRYSTAL® (76.2 SRM) Grain 3 9.5 %
0.83 lb Chocolate Malt (Thomas Fawcett) (508.0 SRM) Grain 4 7.3 %
0.62 lb CHÂTEAU MUNICH (12.7 SRM) Grain 5 5.4 %
0.31 lb CHÂTEAU CAFÉ (254.0 SRM) Grain 6 2.7 %
0.31 lb Carafa II (412.0 SRM) Grain 7 2.7 %
0.17 lb Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 8 1.5 %

I'm thinking I probably mashed too high somehow and don't have enough fermentable sugars.

Fermentation is stuck at 1.031 for almost 2 weeks, repitched another 15grams of us05 and ramped up the temperature to 22c and waited another 5 days but still at same 1.031 gravity.
 
I made a stout with an OG of 1.070 and it stopped at 1.030, but I mashed kinda' high (like you did), but I did it deliberately as I wanted a sweet stout. I love the way it turned out. However, I had I had a pound of lactose in mine and you don't have that, so 1.031 without lactose is really high. If you've repitched and warmed the yeast and it's still at 1.031 then I think that's as low as you'll get your FG. Hopefully you think the beer is at least okay and next time just mash lower. You're learning and as long as you had fun, learned and created at least a drinkable beer, then it's all good. :)
 
I'm inclined to think it's infected, I've opened the lid for pitching a other yeas as suggested but then saw think greyis layer on top of the beer.
Photo is attached. Anyone can tell me if this is an infection?
infectedornot.jpg
 
Doesn't look infected to me. Looks kind of like floating yeast rafts. Most infections look more white/bubbly thingys with tendrils going to other white bubble thingys.

I pitched a packet of US05 dry yeast directly on my stuck fermentation and the airlock started to slowly bubble about 48 hours later. I'm hoping this drops me back down the 5 points i needed to get to 1.015 or lower.

Also, get your wine thief and grab a sample. Taste will tell you if its infected too.
 
Hydrometer or refractometer? If you did pitch enough yeast and handled the fermentation properly it sounds like a refractometer reading.
 
There’s amylase enzyme but I’ve seen mixed reviews so I assume great care must be taken. The concept is that beta comes along and gives you maltose for feeding the yeast...or something like that.
 
Doesn't look infected to me. Looks kind of like floating yeast rafts. Most infections look more white/bubbly thingys with tendrils going to other white bubble thingys.

I pitched a packet of US05 dry yeast directly on my stuck fermentation and the airlock started to slowly bubble about 48 hours later. I'm hoping this drops me back down the 5 points i needed to get to 1.015 or lower.

Also, get your wine thief and grab a sample. Taste will tell you if its infected too.

If they are yeast rafts will they go away by themself? It started right after 2nd pitch of us05 to try and get fermentation going again.

On another note I took another look and decided to shake the keg a bit.
After reconnecting the airlock some bubbles escaped (co2 in suspension?) and the top layer was gone. All I saw was some foam bubbles on top now with yeasy coulored particles?
 
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