I'm brewing a strong scottish ale: 10 lbs light malt extract, 1 lb crystal malt 1/4 lb chocolate malt, 1/4 lb toasted malt with WLP 028 scottish ale yeast. Yesterday was day 23 in primary and I still had activity through my blow off, it's been about every 6 minutes for about a week. Og was 1.062 and gravity reading last night night was only at 1.021. Seems pretty weak to me. Does this sound right, should I rack to a secondary? Wort is still real cloudy (couldn't see the hydrometer in my thief) so i checked it straight in the bucket. Thanks, Gregg
I use Wyeast 1728 on many of my recipes, which I believe is the WLP equivalent. I consistently get pretty good attenuation (1.004-1.012, depending on the recipe), but I haven't done it with extracts, and I tend to deliberately mash for high fermentability on those recipes. You could be close to FG depending on the fermentability of the extract. Temperature is a big factor in how quickly it is going to take. What are the temperature conditions for your wort, and have they changed suddenly in a way that might cause the yeast to slow or stall? Also, did you have a good starter, a cake/washed yeast from a previous batch, or just pitch a vial? Wort over 1.050 needs plenty of vigorous yeast for a quick fermentation.
Next time consult a yeast calculator site like mrmalty.com and make a starter or pitch multiple vials... 1.062 could use 2 probably 3 vials for a proper pitching rate or 1 vial into a 1.5-2 liter starter. Due to your under pitching your beer may not fully attenuate out and could lead to some possible off flavors as well. Ya brew and ya learn. And I'd let the beer sit in primary till there's no more activity but I doubt it's gonna get much lower than where your at now.
Your recipe looks good, your temperature is good, but, like stated above, I agree that you could have used more yeast, either via multiple vials, or (cheaper) a starter with some lead time before brew day. I under-pitched with the 1728 once when I got a much higher OG than I was expecting. The beer was still good (don't worry about that!), but it was the one time the yeast crapped out on me upon bottling, and failed to carbonate beyond a very modest level despite an appropriate amount of priming sugar. Also, I was very close to the listed alcohol tolerance level for the yeast (11 3/4%), so that, combined with under-pitching, did me in. In your case, I believe it will eventually finish, but with less yeast working on the job, it will just take longer. Just be patient, and when the gravity does stop dropping you are done.
