Stuck at 1030...yes I've tried that.

[Cold Country Brewery]

Brewed a Russian Imperial Stout 3 weeks ago. Used Wyeast Denny's favorite 50. Took off like crazy made a mess on my wall, floor, ceiling. So I installed the blow off tube (6 hours too late), and it went strong for about 5 days.
*Tested the gravity at 2 weeks 1.030 - 3 days in a row and it stayed the same
*tried re-suspending the yeast...no luck
*tried moving it to a warmer spot...no luck
*Added a vile of White Labs yeast. No I didn't do a starter, I figured what's the point of doing a 1030 starter when my beer is sitting at 1030....no luck
*As a last resort I threw re-hydrated US-05 in...no luck
*Last night I Boiled a small amount of sugar and added that in...AIR LOCK ACTIVITY! Stopped about noon today, and tonight I checked the gravity. 1030!...so all it did was eat the new sugar!

So now I have Wyeast, White Labs, and dry yeast sitting at the bottom of my carboy, and my beer is sitting at 1030. I don't want to let the beer sit on the dead yeast much longer, but what do I do? Chalk it up as a FG of 1.030 and hope for no bottle bombs? I wanted to let this one age a minimum of 6 months in the bottles. And no, I'm not doing BEANO, the last thing I want is a super dry RIS.

 

[Yooper]

An RIS at 1.030 sounds about right to me.

 

[stevehaun]

What was your OG?

 

[Revvy]

Then it's not stuck, it's finished. My Og 1.150 barleyine finished at 1.040. That was after pitching a second huge starter of a different yeast, along with more sugar.

 

[erkwist]

If we knew your sg, we could be of more help. Keep the apparent attenuation in mind as well, with an sg of 1.100 a yeast with an attenuation of 80% would only take you to 1.020.
So a RIS, to most of us is a big beer (1.100+) so unless the yeast has a greater attenuation than 70% then your done.. and 1.030 sounds pretty good for a RIS.

 

[Cold Country Brewery]

Geeze, so I've been worrying this whole time over nothing. I was just afraid of bottle bombs. OG was 1.087. So in the future, how do I know when it's done and when it's stuck?

OG was 1.087
FG was 1.030
Apparent Attenuation comes in at 65.52
Denny's Favorite is listed at 74-76%

I was expecting the FG to be around 1.020; that would give me about the correct attenuation.

 

[Revvy]

Bottle bombs only happen when unfermented sugars get fermented in the bottle, along with the sugar you added. If a beer is finished, if you've done everything possible to re-rouse the yeast, even added more yeast, and nothing has changed, then the beer is not stuck, there should be no unfermentated sugars left to start fermenting.

 

[Cold Country Brewery]

Bottle bombs only happen when unfermented sugars get fermented in the bottle, along with the sugar you added. If a beer is finished, if you've done everything possible to re-rouse the yeast, even added more yeast, and nothing has changed, then the beer is not stuck, there should be no unfermentated sugars left to start fermenting.

Okay thanks. Time to bottle this and put it away (out of sight, out of mind). I guess the good thing about this is I got to try many samples of this beer with all the gravity testing I did. I'm very excited for this beer, the samples tasted great!