To dilute or not?

[Davidm714]

I brewed what I was aiming to be a Scottish export 80 Schilling a few weeks ago. As I'm still working out the kinks in my new setup I ended up mashing way too high, 156+. So my final gravity is at 1.024 and won't budge. The starting gravity was 1.050. It was in primary for 2 weeks and secondary for 1.5 weeks and like I said I couldn't get it to drop any more gravity points. So my question is this: if I were to add water to the beer at kegging to get the final gravity down to an acceptable level would I end up with a decent Scottish light ale? It's pretty full bodied as it is and it seems like there could be some leeway to avoid it being watery. Thanks for any input

 

[doug293cz]

By any chance are you measuring your FG with a refractometer? If so, did you use an alcohol compensation calculator to deal with effect of alcohol content on the index of refraction?

Brew on

 

[Davidm714]

No, I use a hydrometer. I checked it's calibration after getting the high fg reading and it's correct

 

[doug293cz]

Ok, then sounds like you just got a lot of unfermentable sugar/dextrin from your mash. You could try adding some alpha amylase enzyme (available from brew supply stores) to the fermenter. This will create more fermentable sugars (even at fermenter temps) from the poly saccharides, which will allow the FG to drop. People get mixed results with this, as it may dry the beer out too much.

Brew on

 

[MrFancyPlants]

I would try a small dose of amylase from the brew shop. It'll take a week or two but should drop the high final gravity from a hot mash.