FG 1.030 Imp Brown...am I doomed?

Any reasonable imperial brown recipe should have attenuated more than that.

Assuming 1.019 is an accurate expectation for the recipe (wouldn't hurt for you to share it), then yes, 1.030 is very dangerous territory if allowed to continue fermenting in the bottle.

Always take two readings, 2-3 days apart. If they are the same and are within the ballpark of what you expected, then it's done.

 

We're talking shrapnel if the yeast are active or become active again.

 

Two questions for you: 1.) Are you confident that you correctly read your hydrometer for the 1.030 reading? 2.) Did your brewing session produce a full amount of the quantity of beer that the recipe was for, i.e. you have a full 5 gallons of beer if it was a 5-gallon recipe? If you didn't compensate for boil-off, you've got a beer that is more concentrated than it should be.

You say that the beer tasted good, thus I assume no sweetness in the taste at all, so you might be okay and all of the sugar is gone.

 

Depending on exactly how much beer you actually left behnd, I have a feeling that you didn't have a full 5 gallons before you started the bottling, thus your 1.030 gravity reading would be a bit high. Five gallons should produce 53 bottles (12-oz. bottles 5 gal x 128 oz. = 640 oz. / 12 oz. = 53.3 bottles) and you got the equivalent of ~45 bottles, thus 85% of the liquid if you did have 5 gallons. (You probably didn't leave 15% behind.) I think I'm using correct logical math here: so if your gravity reading was .030 (drop the 1 digit) and you take it times 85%, you get .0255 (or 1.026 by rounding the .0255 to 3 digits and adding the 1 digit back) as your correct FG. If you think the FG reading could have been 1.028, then the correct FG might have been 1.024 (.85 x .028 = .0238 or 1.024). (Your recipe expected 1.016 - 1.019 FG)

Rather than putting everything back into a carboy to start fermenting again and waiting it out (high risk of oxidation), my recommendation is to check a bottle for carbonation after 4 days to see if the priming sugar is working. Hopefully you'll have only a very slightly carbonated beer, which indicates that the primary fermemntation was done and only the priming sugar is at work now. (Drink the rest of this beer to determine how sweet the taste might be, which may be a hint of what other steps to take.) Check another bottle after another 4 days to help confirm this.

But you could have had a stuck primary fermentation, and by bottling the beer maybe you roused the yeast to get busy eating that unfermented sugar again. So, if your first bottle is fully carbonated (or a gusher) at 4 days, it's likely that there is too much sugar in the bottles and that they will become over-carbonated. It's hard to predict how much over-carbonation will occur because of the uncertainty of the FG reading, but at this point if the beer is fully carbed (or a gusher) you should get these beers under refrigeration so that additional yeast action will cease.

I hope you have room in the fridge for them. I can't tell from your avatar whether you live in a state with a cold climate, but a garage or a back porch (no lower than 32 degrees) might be a good place to store these beers in case they do start exploding.

Good luck!

 

If the (correctly) measured gravity was 1.030, then the gravity is 1.030. You don't correct gravity for volume. You can (and should) correct mash efficiency calcs for volume, and actual volume can help you understand why gravity is not what you were expecting. But in OP's case, if the FG is high due to low volume, then the OG would have been high also. According to OP, measured OG was 1.078. So apparent attenuation was ~62%, and not the 76-ish expected.

 

Yeah, my bad on that. I had it in mind that IF he had added top-off water, then the gravity would have been the number that I calculated. But my IF translated into 'he did' in my brain. Yep, 1.030 high octane (high-sugar) beer did go into those bottles, so caution is highly advised.

 

Did you mean to say 'warmest' setting? I'd go to that level (which is probably just below 30) and see if you have a light timer that is rated for the power level of that freezer so that you can set it to turn on for only a half hour per day which may keep it around 50 degrees. (Maybe a full hour daily if a half hour doesn't keep it under 60.) An external thermostat control would work even better. and it would be useful to allow you to brew lagers. https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_...xternal+thermostat,aps,164&crid=1RDGYF6Q633LF

 

I just skimmed your earlier posts in this thread and I didn't see anywhere that you said at what temp this beer was exposed to while fermenting. If you are bottle conditioning now at 50 degrees, it's likely that your yeast have gone dormant and won't do the job for you. If your primary fermentation was also on the chilly side, that could be the reason why the beer never reached it's intended final gravity.... the yeast went to sleep. Can you put a few bottles into an environment around 70 degrees to see how well the bottle condition goes? NOTE: you probably still need to use caution if you put any beers at 70 degrees because the re-activated yeast could eat the conditioning sugar and then start on the leftover sugar from the primary fermentation and give you too much CO2.

 

I'm giving you an Honorable Mention "like" for the math exercise . . .

 

Ahhh, a bit of redemption for much ado about nothing.