Lower FG than other brews, not sure why

[deviousalex]

I do extract brewing, which (I am told at least) will result in a higher FG than if you did all-grain brewing. Normally I end up with an FG of 1.015-1.017. I recently did a American style hef with American hef yeast (White labs). I ended up with an FG of 1.008. I am glad this happened, but does anyone have any idea why this could have occurred? When I did the starter for this beer the starter did not ferment nearly as much as previous starters I have made. I didn't even get a good layer of foam on top of it! Also, the primary fermentation was not nearly as vigorous as I have had in the past. The recipe was basically a bunch of light DME, wheat DME, and I steeped some crystal 15 before the boil to add a little more body.

 

[agroff383]

I do extract brewing, which (I am told at least) will result in a higher FG than if you did all-grain brewing. Normally I end up with an FG of 1.015-1.017. I recently did a American style hef with American hef yeast (White labs). I ended up with an FG of 1.008. I am glad this happened, but does anyone have any idea why this could have occurred? When I did the starter for this beer the starter did not ferment nearly as much as previous starters I have made. I didn't even get a good layer of foam on top of it! Also, the primary fermentation was not nearly as vigorous as I have had in the past. The recipe was basically a bunch of light DME, wheat DME, and I steeped some crystal 15 before the boil to add a little more body.

From my experience, different liquid yeasts appear differently when in a starter form. Sometimes I will make a starter with Wit yeast and it looks crazy, like a full blown ferment in a 5 gallon batch! Other times I see maybe my San Fran lager yeast just kind of hangs out and maybe develops a small krausen. So I wouldnt go with visible yeast activity as an absolute indicator of starter health/size. But if you are underpitching or overpitching normally, then maybe that was the difference you were seeing in this batch.

As far as all grain finishing lower than extract, I cant say in my personal experience that I have noticed that, using dry yeast and checking gravity maybe 2 weeks after brew day, I am always at 1010 to 1012. Using dry yeast that is, my Blue Moon clone finished at 1008. When I did extract the results were much the same. But 1008 is a bit dry for that style but it will be nice an crisp, I wouldnt worry about it too much as long as your process and sanitizing were up to par.