My beers stall consistently...?!

Thanks for the detailed response. It makes sense to me that you correct to hydrometer readings, but for some reason I thought you were suggesting you correct based on some understanding or assumptions about sugar composition.

The reason I haven't put so much thought into this is I do not use my refractometer for calculating ABV. I use the refrac for preboil gravity readings, where I can evaluate if my extraction efficiency is off, and possibly make decisions about adding DME, or adjusting final volume target. I use my hydrometer for ABV calcs. Although some balk at the thought of wasting beer to fill a hydrometer (my tube takes about 6 oz), I find that the value of tasting beer during the process, especially before making packaging decisions, outweighs this concern.

 

I too taste the hydrometer samples - both the OG sample (i.e., tasting the wort) and the FG sample (i.e, tasting the beer prior to packaging). I view this as a part of my brewery's QC/QA program.

Cheers!

 

After getting the post boil gravity, I also taste the hydrometer sample. It is a quality assurance measure, albeit a less sensitive one than the post fermentation sample. I can't recall ever make a decision based on my perceptions of this samples. I suppose if I tasted an off flavor at this time, I might think twice about pitching the yeast, but given how sweet the wort is, I think it unlikely. However, as a matter of ceremony, I pour the hydrometer sample into a 6 oz wine glass and spike my blood sugar, and then refill the wine glass with whatever I have on tap to celebrate the end of a brew day and messy kitchen.

 

I taste the wort to see how bitter it is - how well did the hops isomerize during the boil. I mostly do this for curiosity reasons; I do not recall making any changes for subsequent batches based upon this taste test.

In contrast my 'method' for taste testing the beer after primary is to pour the sample into a small (7 ounce) sham Pilsner glass and place it in the refrigerator for 24 hours to permit the yeast to settle out. In other words when I taste this sample the beer has already been packaged but I taste the sample again mostly for curiosity reasons. These taste tests can sometimes be a bit surprising in that on more than one occasion while I did not detect an off-flavor (and therefore the beer did not have signs of contamination/infection) the beer did not taste particularly appealing but the carbonated beer a few weeks later was tasty. The power of carbonation? Or the magic of conditioning?

Cheers!

 

Just an implied general assumption about relative proportions of simple sugars/complex sugars/dextrins, based on predicted wort attenuability. e.g. higher predicted attenuability --> less complex stuff --> lower refractive index --> lower recommended WCF. I used some of Sean's data, plus a theoretical all sucrose wort, to build the simple model that provides the recommended WCF for each batch.