Might have bottled too eaely, but ...

[Wincky]

hi guys! just wondering if someone could help me please.
I made an IPA recently, left it to ferment for 1 week, put it in the secondary for 2 weeks and went to bottle it. About half way through bottling I took the SG reading and it was at 1.020 (ish). I decided to carry on and bottle the rest but I haven't carbonated it because I don't want bottles to explode everywhere. Will it carry on fermenting in the bottles and be alright to open up and carbonate at a later date? I'm not really sure what to do from here. If someone could help then that would be amazing! thanks!

 

[Pkrd]

It should be done by three weeks.
Crack a bottle after 3 or 4 days and do a gravity reading. If its 1.020 still you can carbonate.

 

[Munchkin]

You should have checked gravity before you started to bottle. A stable gravity after 3 consecutive days for a regular abv beer is considered to be ready to bottle. 1.020 is quite high for a FG however it is possible it got stuck somewhere along the way. After 3 weeks the beer is likely to have fermented out what it could assuming temperatures were within range. Im assuming you capped the bottles, my suggestion would be to wait a couple days and check the gravity in one of the bottles again, if its 1.020, prime and recap.

 

[BigFloyd]

I suspect that one week primary, two weeks secondary nonsense was following kit instructions. Next time, wad those up and toss them in the trash. Better to leave it a couple weeks in primary, check gravity, wait a few days and check again. Stable readings = ready to bottle.

It's hard to say for sure if this one was really finished at 1.020 since you pulled it off the yeast too early.

 

[kh54s10]

Extract kits often finish at 1.020. There is enough yeast transferred to secondary that even if transferred too early it should finish.

That said, best practice is to take 2 gravity readings with a day in between. If they are the same, fermentation should be finished if there were no other problems. (stalled feremntations etc.)

 

[Hello]

You say you didn't carbonate it but you bottled it? Did you not add priming sugar? If there is yeast and it was not done fermenting then I assure you, it's carbonating in that bottle and they could explode if there is enough sugar for the yeast to eat.

What is done is likely done. You risk oxidation if you transfer your beer from bottles back to a fermentation vessel.

 

[rmyurick]

I assume you capped the bottles? If so, I'd open one up a couple Weeks after your bottling date and see if it's carbed. If not,I guess you could add a carbonation tablet to each bottle & recap. In the meantime, read the first couple chapters of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. (or you can read john palmer online)

 

[unionrdr]

If fermentation starts up again in the bottles,they could carbonate naturally. I used to make sparkling wines that way. But the beer might over-carbonate,so be carefull checking them in a couple weeks.

 

[jro238]

As others have said, definitely check a bottle in a week or so to see if you have any carbonation. I honestly doubt that you will. 1 week in primary and 2 in secondary, while not strictly ideal for most beers, is more than enough time for a healthy fermentation to complete. This paired with the fact that a lot of beginner extract batches tend to finish out at 1.020 leads me to think your beer is probably done.

If the beer is done and the bottles aren't carbing then I would prime them 1 by 1 in the bottle to minimize oxygen exposure from putting them back into a bottling bucket.

 

[brewprint]

It seems like several of my extract kits that were supposed to be big beers ended at around 1.020 or so. Those were all at least 7-10 days in the primary and 2 weeks in a secondary. I only used dry yeast for them and didn't rehydrate the yeast. Is the dry yeast the reason they didn't finish?

I've never had a bottle bomb btw.

 

[wxman73]

How did you measure the gravity? With a hydrometer or a refractometer? If its a refractometer, you will need to make some further calculations to get the final gravity of fermented wort. I had a lot of "stuck" fermentations until i learned this.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[KepowOb]

It seems like several of my extract kits that were supposed to be big beers ended at around 1.020 or so. Those were all at least 7-10 days in the primary and 2 weeks in a secondary. I only used dry yeast for them and didn't rehydrate the yeast. Is the dry yeast the reason they didn't finish?

I've never had a bottle bomb btw.

Being at 1.020 doesn't mean it's not finished, it very well could be finished... I mean, if you make a beer with a lot of unfermentable sugars, you could have a 1.050 FG, and have no risk of bottle bombs or anything like that.

Dry yeast isn't your problem (though rehydrating would help), it's the extract most likely. Now, some yeast strains are have high attentuation than others... if you're pitching something like Windsor, you'll be left with a higher FG than something like US-05 for example.... but I would be it's your extract that is the problem.

A lot of extract brewers get stuck at 1.020 . Extract can vary in quality, and some brands have more fermentable sugars than others... and there might be more to it than that. I've had one or two beers get stuck at 1.020, but it's never been an issue for me, and I use extract, but I've always used the same source, so that might be part of it, I'm not really sure.

 

[peterj]

It seems like several of my extract kits that were supposed to be big beers ended at around 1.020 or so. Those were all at least 7-10 days in the primary and 2 weeks in a secondary. I only used dry yeast for them and didn't rehydrate the yeast. Is the dry yeast the reason they didn't finish?

I've never had a bottle bomb btw.

No, it's the extract. Extract tends to have a lot of unfermentable sugars in it. Normally with a big beer you would want to mash a little lower in order to help the beer finish at the right FG, but with extract you can't control the mash temp. In my experience extract usually attenuates as if it had been mashed at around 156-158F which is pretty high. In order to counteract this, if I wanted a beer to finish drier I would replace some of the extract (usually a pound or so) with a simple sugar.

 

[Wincky]

thanks for all the suggestions guys. i've been checking the FG with a hydrometer and it's still the same so I decided to add some carbonation drops to the bottles (I used them instead of priming sugar because I've had bottles explode on me before, possibly from me calculating things wrong) I guess I'll just have to wait and see how it goes from now. It's probably the tastiest beer I've ever made so I'll be gutted if they explode.
I did use extract in it, but it wasn't a kit beer, is this the reason why it didn't ferment completely? is there anything I can do next time to get the most out of it?

 

[pablosbrewing]

No, it's the extract. Extract tends to have a lot of unfermentable sugars in it.

It's the yeast and bad advice in kit instructions. Very few extracts finish high under good condtions (Laaglander is one).

I brewed extract/extract with specialty grains from 1993 to 2004 and I was typically within +/-.002 of expected FG - well over 40 brews. The bulk of them finished 1.008-1.012.

I was lucky to have access to some great resources and classes 20 years ago. Here is what I learned maybe it will help.

• If you brew kits - discard the yeast from the kit, buy fresh yeast. Kit yeasts are usually too small a package (6-7g) and they have been exposed to unkind temperatures.
• Rehydrate your new yeast in 90-100F water, let it cool
• Cool wort to room temp before pitching
• Aerate - shake the bucket or stir like a fiend - for several minutes. Make some foam. I eventually went to an aquarium pump and stainless aeration stone.
• Pitch the yeast - make great beer.

Edit: yes I used dry yeast for 80% of my beers - still do even though I have moved to all grain.

 

[unionrdr]

Cooling wort to room temp works better when you have a couple gallons of water chillin' in the fridge a day or two before brew day to top off with. I chill to about 75F,sometimes 70F. Then strain into the FV & top of with chilled spring water to 65F or a bit less. This gives a far better pitch temp,especially when the rehydrate or starter is within 10 degrees of wort temp & at high krausen.

 

[peterj]

It's the yeast and bad advice in kit instructions. Very few extracts finish high under good condtions (Laaglander is one).

No. It's the extract. Like I said extract is mashed in the middle to high range. So for normal sized beers you will probably get to about the FG you would want (though from my experience it was usually still a bit high because most extracts have at least some carapils if not more crystal malts added). But in the situation that brewprint was talking about with brewing big beers it would be like mashing a high gravity beer in the 154-158F range and adding crystal malt to it, which will cause it to finish high (probably around 1.020 depending on the OG).

Yeast is a lot hardier than you're giving it credit for. Unless you have some crazy temperature problems, once the yeast get going they'll usually finish a beer out as far as they can. And these days, the yeast you get in most kits is just fine to use as long as it's still within expiration. Dry yeast is incredibly resilient which is just one of it's many positive qualities. The only reason I have for using liquid yeast is the variety of strains. But most of the time I use dry.

 

[KepowOb]

No. It's the extract. Like I said extract is mashed in the middle to high range. So for normal sized beers you will probably get to about the FG you would want (though from my experience it was usually still a bit high because most extracts have at least some carapils if not more crystal malts added). But in the situation that brewprint was talking about with brewing big beers it would be like mashing a high gravity beer in the 154-158F range and adding crystal malt to it, which will cause it to finish high (probably around 1.020 depending on the OG).

Yeast is a lot hardier than you're giving it credit for. Unless you have some crazy temperature problems, once the yeast get going they'll usually finish a beer out as far as they can. And these days, the yeast you get in most kits is just fine to use as long as it's still within expiration. Dry yeast is incredibly resilient which is just one of it's many positive qualities. The only reason I have for using liquid yeast is the variety of strains. But most of the time I use dry.

As far as I can tell, it also varies greatly on the extract you use. Thanks to advice from these forums, I use mostly extra-light / pilsen-light extract as my base, and just use steeping grains to get my desired colour and flavour, and I can only think of one beer that I've had which got stuck at 1.020, and I've yet to use any sugar to dry things out or boost the ABV. I even did a IIPA (was around 9%, with a FG below 1.010, though I don't have my notes with me atm (I'm wasting time at work )).

As you said, a lot of extracts have some crystal in there... if you're getting an amber or dark extract, it has something in there to give it it's colour. I'm not saying that this is the only option, but if you're often getting stuck at 1.020, either try another brand of extract, or go with only the extra-light stuff and see if you get better results.