The Gravity of Things

[Leggoma]

I have some questions/concerns about the gravity of my first batch of beer. After a week of fermentation, I racked to a secondary (learned later that this is often unnecessary, but was just following the brew kit instructions at the time). The gravity for this American Amber was initially 1.066, and after a week 1.020. A week after that, the gravity is still the same at 1.020.

I do have "How to Brew" and looked at the possible culprits, but wanted to either some reassurances or disagreements. After tasting the beer, it tasted like an amber. The hoppiness was there, bitter and not sour. It tasted a bit sweet to me, not overly, but I'm sure there is still more sugar hanging around waiting for fermentation.

I did have concerns that the closet I was storing it in was around 63F, when the kit said to store it at 67F, but i figured 4 degrees wouldn't kill it. After reading the suggestions in the book, I moved the beer to the slightly warmer upstairs bathroom (heat vent closed). I also kind of swirled to beer in the carboy while trying not to slosh it around too much to try to reactivate what seems to be dormant yeast.

So if that doesn't work, I guess my options are to pitch some more yeast or just bottle it. I'm worried if I pitch more yeast this late in the game, it may affect the flavor (which, other than the slight sweetness, its not the worse tasting beer I've had). If I bottle it with the priming sugar to carbonate, will it ferment some of the corn sugar, or is that only for CO2?

 

[moparx12]

i would think that if it was an American amber kit, it should not have been at 1.066 to begin with. I would not suspect a problem with yeast. I would first check out the possibility of a bad hydrometer. your ABV is already over 6% which i think is good for that style.

I would bottle the batch as normal with priming sugar and chalk up the high FG to either a bad hydrometer or old DME/LME that is hesitant to ferment entirely.

 

[Leggoma]

Yeah, I knew the OG was higher than it was supposed to be, which was 1.057. The final gravity was supposed to be 1.011. So basically the gravity changed the exact amount it was "supposed to". 1.057 - 1.011 = 1.066 - 1.020 (.046). It very well could by my hydrometer, I didn't even think about that. Those things are pretty fragile. The slight sweetness could also be me just over-analyzing things or looking for something that is or isn't there.

 

[humulene]

I am only on my 4th batch of beer so I'm not the most experienced person to answer.

That said, I have been surprised (and a little disappointed) in the sweetness that extract imparts on the beer. In particualr liquid extract that is boiled for 60 minutes (like my first 3 batches) gets very sweet. My last batch was bottled only one week ago so I can't report on the final product but I tried using dry malt extract and added half of it in toward the end of the batch. Late extract additions are supposed to reduce the amount of carmelization that occurs with extracts.

I also noticed when playing around with recipe generators that hop utilization is affected greatly by partial boils. I have a small pot to boil wort so I was starting with 2 gallons of water and topping off to 5. When you do this you have to greatly increase the hops. Try making a recipe on brewersfriend.com as a 5 gallon boil and then compare the vital stats (IBUs, etc.) with the same recipe prepared using a smaller boil volume. It's crazy.

Of course, none of this may apply to you since I don't know your situation but good luck anyway!

 

[Leggoma]

Thanks for the info Humulene. I did burn some of the malt extract on the bottom of my pot when adding it. It came in a vacuum sealed bag so it was like squeezing out a huge bottle of tooth paste. Wish I would have had a third arm to stir while I was getting it all out. Anyways, maybe that is attributing to the tad bit more sweetness than I was expecting.

I did a full boil, since I invested in an 8 gallon pot with spigot and thermometer. I just downloaded a trial of Brewsmith and planning my second batch now.