High FG and way to fix it?

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Greg83

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Hello fellow homebrewers. I brewed a stout with an OG of 1.084 and FG of 1.030 after almost a month. Foolishly I used only one packet of US05. There is a pound of lactose in there also. I want it down a bunch because it's pretty sweet right now. I am brewing a hefeweizen with wlp300. I was thinking about when the hef was done racking the stout on top of the yeast cake. Would this take my FG down a bit on the stout? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.


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Hello fellow homebrewers. I brewed a stout with an OG of 1.084 and FG of 1.030 after almost a month. Foolishly I used only one packet of US05. There is a pound of lactose in there also. I want it down a bunch because it's pretty sweet right now. I am brewing a hefeweizen with wlp300. I was thinking about when the hef was done racking the stout on top of the yeast cake. Would this take my FG down a bit on the stout? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.


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Lactose is not fermentable, and you have a milk stout. Maybe you can find some lactase, which will break it down into fermentable sugars and it may ferment out.

You might like this:
Chemistry of Beer

Edit:

You could also sour it through a lacto-fermentation, though that will completely change the characteristics.
 
Yeah, with all the lactose I'm not sure you can bring it down much farther. You could try pitching it on the cake to see what happens, but you may not get much out of it. For now try warming it up and swirling the carboy to rouse the yeast.
 
You could add another yeast to the mix. It will NOT ferment the lactose so you will still end up with a high F.G. but you might be able to squeeze a few more points out that way. Keep in mind I haven't tried this but in theory it should work as long as the alcohol tolerance is higher than your current ABV. That being said since you used US 05 you may get almost as good of results following blizzards advice about warming and swirling without the cost of another yeast pack. Regardless I's be interested to see what you do and how it works so please keep us posted.
 
You could try adding something like this instead of Lactaid which has some chemical preservatives which could interfere with fermentation. The only ingredients to this are lactase, glycerine, and water.

The glycerine will contribute to body and mouthfeel, and is sometimes used as a "finishing formula - mostly for wines, I think. I have never used it, so I couldn't say for sure, but I don't think there are high enough levels in this type of product to cause you problems.

Let us know what you do and how it turns out.
 
Hello fellow homebrewers. I brewed a stout with an OG of 1.084 and FG of 1.030 after almost a month. Foolishly I used only one packet of US05. There is a pound of lactose in there also. I want it down a bunch because it's pretty sweet right now. I am brewing a hefeweizen with wlp300. I was thinking about when the hef was done racking the stout on top of the yeast cake. Would this take my FG down a bit on the stout? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.


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What is your grain bill and mash temp?


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Lactose has a gravity potential of 43 points per gallon. That should mean that the total gravity contribution to a five-gallon brew from lactose is about .0086 of completely unfermentable sugars.

Assuming you have added the lactose to five gallons of wort, that leaves you with an adjusted gravity of 1.0214, consisting of components from your other ingredients. Focusing on fermenting these out has more gravity-reducing potential than trying to ferment out the pound of lactose (and is probably easier).

You can probably get some more help by providing your full grain bill and mashing temps/times, as IL1kebeer requested.
 
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