Stuck fermentation or nothing to worry about (picture)

[chickypad]

I’d be shocked if the temperature was any issue. I regularly ferment at the low end of recommended fermentation temp and lower in some cases. Did your starter have an active fermentation that you noticed? Was your starter exposed to any conditions that may have damaged some of the yeast? Was it exposed to light for an extended period?

What is the concern here? All my starters ferment on the countertop in the light. The only concern I am aware of is a beer with hops getting light struck, which shouldn't apply to starters and isn't really a yeast health issue anyway. Unless you're talking direct sunlight raising the temp too high or something I'm not sure what the issue would be.

 

[psu12288]

That is not a liter starter, it is a 450 ml starter. The 500 ml of wort you added just before pitching doesn't count. Did you put the full 100g of DME in that? If so your starter wort was about 1.082 - not a great way to grow yeast. You want to be more in the 1.035-1.040 range. So sounds like a number of issues - probably stressed and/or underpitched yeast, temps maybe a little low to finish, poor efficiency (I think in the 50's eyeballing your pre-boil numbers) with a large amount of specialty grains that contribute unfermentables.

For a starter you really don't need to boil it down like that, just bring to a boil and it should be enough to kill off any baddies. You want 1g of DME per 10 ml of liquid. If you don't have a stir plate make sure to swirl/shake as frequently as you can while it's fermenting out. The rest of your process for chilling and decanting sounds okay, some yeast especially English strains can be chunky, as long as you get it all in the fermenter it should be okay if the other conditions are good.

It didn’t seem right to me but I followed the instructions for the kit from northern brewer. 1/2 cup of DME boiled in 650 ml of water. I guess I have a lot to learn from.

 

[psu12288]

Are you going to bottle or keg? I'd be very leery of putting a 1.043 beer into a bottle, setting yourself for bombs. How does it taste? Like others have said, learn to make good simple beers before trying to do too much.

We plan on bottle conditioning, but I did pitch more yeast and raise the temperature of the beer a few degrees. So I’m hoping we get a little more out of it. Based off of what we did and the information provided, I’m thinking there wasn’t enough yeast, not enough sugar for the yeast and it was a little too cold.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Here’s the recipe:

Fermentables-
8 lbs rahr 2 row
2 lbs caramel 10
2 lbs caramel 60
1 lbs roasted barley
.8 lbs chocolate 350

At 1.069, that's going to be one hell of a sweet beer. ESBrewer talked about 50 to 60% base malt being the minimum in a beer - that's OK for a smaller beer (eg. Mild Ale) because the TOTAL specialty grains are still in a good range. In a beer of this gravity (high) the amounts of specialty grain (especially crystal/caramel malt) is likely to be cloying. In a big beer, I'd suggest up to 10% as a normal amount, 15% at the high end and MAYBE go to 20% specialty grains in a malt bomb. Although I still think the cold floor is the issue, I wouldn't expect this beer to go far below 1.030 anyway, such a high level of unfermentable dextrins and lactose. I really hope this works out well for you, but I suspect you may end up with a beer that you sip in very small quantities.

 

[psu12288]

At 1.069, that's going to be one hell of a sweet beer. ESBrewer talked about 50 to 60% base malt being the minimum in a beer - that's OK for a smaller beer (eg. Mild Ale) because the TOTAL specialty grains are still in a good range. In a beer of this gravity (high) the amounts of specialty grain (especially crystal/caramel malt) is likely to be cloying. In a big beer, I'd suggest up to 10% as a normal amount, 15% at the high end and MAYBE go to 20% specialty grains in a malt bomb. Although I still think the cold floor is the issue, I wouldn't expect this beer to go far below 1.030 anyway, such a high level of unfermentable dextrins and lactose. I really hope this works out well for you, but I suspect you may end up with a beer that you sip in very small quantities.

I expected it to be a little higher because of the lactose but I didn’t realize I’d get that little out of the specialty grains. Thanks for the input.