Yeast and Fermentation Question

[BEER_WENCH]

I brewed a Waldo Lake extract kit beer using Denny's Fav. Yeast. The yeast was right at the due date, but did expand in the smack pack, so I used it with a starter. OG was 1.063 on 1/3 and FG is 1.020 on 1/20. I racked it into the secondary fermenter yesterday. The thing is, I am wondering if the yeast did enough of its job. There is no specification for FG, so I'm not sure how far off the mark my beer is at this point.

Is there anything I can do at this point to increase ABV?

I appreciate any helpful feedback.

~ Beer Wench in Colorado

 

[Clonefarmer]

I brewed a Waldo Lake extract kit beer using Denny's Fav. Yeast. The yeast was right at the due date, but did expand in the smack pack, so I used it with a starter. OG was 1.063 on 1/3 and FG is 1.020 on 1/20. I racked it into the secondary fermenter yesterday. The thing is, I am wondering if the yeast did enough of its job. There is no specification for FG, so I'm not sure how far off the mark my beer is at this point.

Is there anything I can do at this point to increase ABV?

I appreciate any helpful feedback.

~ Beer Wench in Colorado

Did you check the gravity over the coarse of a few days? It may have not been done. What was the temp of the fermentation? Depending on how cool it was the fermentation could have been slowed.

You could add sugars to boost ABV. However, I would advise against raising ABV with sugars if it's not to style. Give it time it may attenuate more in secondary.

How does it taste?

 

[BigB]

Your FG might be a little high, but only a couple of points... so I wouldn't worry about it and just leave it be. But if you really want to get more attenuation, you could add 1/2 tsp of amylase enzyme. However, by doing so, you will also dry out the beer a bit.

 

[MalFet]

You hit about 68% attenuation on this beer, which is a bit low for is yeast but could be caused by a number of things. My guess is that it is just not done. Ideally, you would have bumped temp up a couple of degrees before racking to secondary. Or, better yet, just skipped the secondary entirely. What temperature did you ferment at?

 

[sjbeerman]

My guess is that the starter volume was not large enough. What was the calculated viability of the yeast prior to making the starter?