Slow Fermentation

[nathan33]

I am relatively new to brewing. about 8 extract brews and a few all grains now. I have just brewed northern brewers mild agk. Brew day went great. I hit everything right and temps were right on and the wort was tasty. I attempted my first starter this time and this may be my problem. Fermentation was very slow to start. It was three or 4 days before any bubles started. I thought maybe a leak in the fermenter so I popped the lid off. nothing. I was going to repitch with dry yeast but I had a few bubbles starting the last day and decided to leave it alone and let it do its thing. Today was almost a week later. airlock is still showing a few bubbles but I decided to put in secondary and check out my gravity. I started at 1.036 and I am now at 1.020. The smell is different from some of my other beers, but I am trying to not get worried.
I used neobritannia yeast.

any suggestions to keep me from getting worried and pitching the dry yeast or should I just hold off and give it time and worry about the taste then?

 

[stpug]

I would not have moved to a secondary until FG (or very near) had been reached. Generally speaking, this only serves to slow/stall any fermentation that's remaining. Personally, I don't use a secondary unless I cannot think of a way around it but that's just my preference. Letting this beer sit in primary for 2-3 weeks would have been optimal. PLUS, the yeast produced from this low gravity beer would be superb for repitching.

So now you have an english? mild (OG 1.032) sitting at 1.020 (1.6% ABV) when measured with a hydrometer (right?). If this is correct, then you should be getting to about 1.009 for a 3.0% ABV brew.

Considering that 1.6% ABV will likely do nothing to slow down yeast, and a 1.020 wort is perfectly adequate for propagating yeast, you are probably in a good place to pitch some dry yeast. I would give the yeast the best chance at success by rehydrating the yeast using sterile WATER following the manufacturers recommended time (10-60 minutes) and pitch the slurry with a little bit of a stir from a sanitized racking cane or something.

I suspect that you'll be able to get this down to where it needs to be with little effort.

If you are by chance using a refractometer for your FG reading then you will need to use a calculator for correction in the presence of alcohol, and that should get you a number that's close to your actual FG. A hydrometer needs no correction except for temperature adjustment.