Some advice for my Dunkel

[jjjjjj]

Ok, so I made my own little recipe of a dunkel and it started about 3 weeks ago. Used 3.3lbs of munich extract, 3.3lbs of wheat extract and then 3 lbs of other grains that I steeped, only an ounce of hops. Hefe yeast, and supposedly the SG was 1.34. I was told it was wrong by the local brewer supplier. Now FG is 1.22, and I am not sure if it is ready to be bottled. Any thoughts? Should I go on with the show? I already primed it and everything, it's in the bottling bucket.

Thanks

 

[scrambledegg81]

Definitely wasn't enough extract in there. BJCP says (stylistically speaking) OG should be 1.048 – 1.056, FG 1.010-1.016. As for bottling, all I can say is 1.022 is much too early. A few questions:

-Is the 1.022 from a single reading or have you checked it for 2-3 days and it's stayed consistent?

-How long was it in primary?

-What kind of hops did you use? An ounce will basically do very little to a beer, even high IBU strains.

The 3 lb. of steeping grains won't do much, if anything, to your gravity. I'd suggest (for future batches), use more extract (maybe even double up, depending on what type you use-brewing software will help you calculate), and look up some different varieties of hops to use. You can use the same variety in a batch without a problem, but like I said above, 1 oz. will hardly do much for flavor & aroma. As it sits, it will be pretty wimpy flavor-wise, and if the yeasties are still active, you might have a bottle bomb situation if you bottled now.

 

[AviatorTroy]

Well now according to BeerTools, your 6.6 lbs of extract would result in an OG of 1.051, which is right in line with the style, so I think your fine there. Not sure about the SG that they gave you. Did you take a gravity reading before you pitched your yeast? Seems the recipe itself is OK. What yeast did you use?

I don't think fermentation is finished yet. Rock your bucket back and forth to stir up the yeast, while being careful not to shake it so hard as to get bubbles in it. Give it another couple of days. No harm in waiting on it. Take a reading every day, it its still changing, even just a little, your little yeastie friends are still chewing on it.

Post updates, let us know how it goes. I've brewed a ton of dunkelwiezens, we'll figure this out.

 

[AviatorTroy]

Oh, just read that you are bottling. I wouldn't, if the yeast takes off again, you'll have exploding bottles. Clearly for some strange reason the fermentation is not complete.

 

[jjjjjj]

This is my recipe:
3.3 of munich
3.3 of wheat
1 lb crystal malt
1 lb carafa II
1 lb special B
1 oz Hallertau 4.7
white labs hefe IV

The .022 is from a single reading, after 3 weeks in the primary. I took the reading of .034, but I wasn't very certain what I should be doing to get a proper reading, I just let the hydrometer sit there and I read the meniscus, so I don't know what I would have done wrong if I did anything wrong.

As for hops, it was 1 ounce of 4.7 AA hallertau, which is what a dunkel recipe called for. I just adjusted it to make it a little different than what they wanted.

The bubbling really stopped after a week and a half, like big time. Maybe from the temp? It was around 63-69 degrees in the primary and just kind of varying in 60s for 3 weeks, mainly at 64 though. I just wanted to bottle because I had already thrown my priming sugar in and I had everything all ready, and the last of my sanitizer, it was mostly a lazyness factor.

My biggest concern is the alcohol content, and if the alcohol content will be affected by this whole thing. I am considering throwing it back into the fermenter if this is going to be a really big problem. It's in bottles now, I will try to keep an eye on it for two days to make sure it's not going to destroy my bar, and if it's going to be really fizzy after a week I am just going to put it all in the fridge.