Safe to Bottle?

[timdurning]

Hi All,

I recently made the oatmeal stout from Brewing Classic Styles as a 3gal BIAB. OG was 1.056, pitched a Wyeast 1098 with no starter (eh?) and it went to sit in my 62º basement. Tested it at 5 days, and gravity read 1.024. It was 1.024 again at 1 week, and then 1.024 after it sat for another week in a 68º room.

My FG is much lower than expected and I'm wondering now if it's safe to bottle given the lack of attenuation. It's possible that I mashed a bit high (156º rather than 154º) but would it cause me to be so off? I was wondering if I should just move to bottle after such consistent gravity readings, but I don't want to risk bombs if it's going to ferment much more. Thanks!

Recipe:
10.2 oz US Flaked Oats (3.0 SRM)
6 lbs 0.1 oz Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)
8.3 oz US Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)
7.7 oz US Victory Malt (28.0 SRM)
5.5 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)
5.5 oz Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM)

1.00 oz UK Golding [5.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
0.25 oz Glacier [5.60 %] - Boil 0.0 min

0.58 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins)
British Ale Yeast (Wyeast Labs #1098)

 

[Pie_Man]

If the gravity is stable over a 2-3 period, it is safe to bottle. I tend to give my beers closer to 3 weeks in the primary to give them time to clean up by off flavor by products produced during fermentation.

Why was FG higher than anticipated? Most likely because there wasn't enough yeast pitched. A starter was an order for this beer. The rest temperature is a little high which creates more longer chain sugars resulting in a less fermentable wort. In the future, I would consult mrmalty.com or yeastcalc.com for determing the appropriate starter size.

 

[MaltyHops]

If the gravity is stable over a 2-3 period, it is safe to bottle. ...

I think this rule of thumb is ok as long as you're within ballpark of where the FG ought to be based on what the expected attenuation of the yeast strain is.

I think I just dodged a bunch of potential bottle bombs - I recently had a Hobgoblin clone using Wy1187 Ringwood staying at about 1.023 for several days and thought I might well have mashed a bit high so went ahead and bottled them primed to 2.5 CO2 volumes.

Couple of days ago I was lookng through the PET bottles of that beer I keep to monitor pressure levels and the plastic caps were actually ballooning out as domes when they should be roughly flat!

So I proceeded to let out the pressures gradually by (refrigerating them bottles first) unscrewing the caps by tiny amounts and letting CO2 out, stopping when the beer started to fizz, resting, and repeating a few times until they seem safe.

With crown capped glass beer bottles of the clone, I put a thin coin over the cap and use a bottle opener to prise the caps off by really tiny amounts until CO2 starts to be released, and again having to stop (Ed. using bottle capper to securely recap), wait for beer to settle and repeat several times. With one of these bottles, as soon as I touched the cap it just popped off and gushed for some while.

I have a bunch of champagne bottled bottles of the clone to deal with next as well.


I also checked the SG of some of the fizzed out beer (which tasted quite good but had what must be a fair bit of carbonic acid bite to them) and it seems to be at 1.012.

So that might be 11 gravity points that carbonated in the bottles which according to BrauKaiser here each grav point equates to 0.5 CO2 volumes so the bottles may have been primed to 5 + 2.5 volumes!


I'm now paying more attention to the expected FG of a beer in Beersmith - make sure the yeast in the recipe has the right average attenuation according to Wyeast/etc, and vary the batch volume until the predicted starting SG matches what is actual measured and the Final Gravity Estimate is what to aim for.


Ed. In other words, I must have had a stuck ferment originally.