Need advice on first Porter

You just had the condition of a vigorous fermentation and not enough head space in your fermenter. What you did here was just fine. Your other option (next time) is to implement a blowoff. If you have a 3 piece airlock a blowoff can be implemented by just putting on flexible transfer tubing on the center piece of the 3-piece airlock:



As regards the situation of your final gravity, can you provide more details here:

• What was your grain bill (or extract & grain bill)?
• Which yeast strain did you use?
• What was your fermentation temperature throughout the fermentation (temperature of the wort/beer)?

Cheers!

 

Wait a couple days and recheck your gravity. Your vigorous ferment likely had nothing to do with your high FG.

 

Was your OG reading close to where it should have been, and are you fairly close to the correct quantity of liquid for your recipe? If you are short on the correct liquid amount, that will give you a higher reading, and if you OG was high, then your FG likely will be too. I agree with the above recs -- take a second reading in a few days to determine if the FG is steady or still moving downward.

 

I would let it roll another week or so, gravity should drop another few points at least. Putting you close to your FG mark.

Cheers

 

Frankly, giving that 'grain bill' and the yeast of Windsor you should not expect to achieve a FG below 1.020.

Within the "Dark LME" you have contributions from dark malts and in addition you used 2 lbs. of dark malts as specialty grains. In total you have 'tons' of unfermentable sugars here. In addition Windsor is not a highly attenuating yeast.

I would be willing to bet 'big bucks' that 1.026 is the lowest you are going to achieve here given the combination of grains/extract and the yeast you used.

Despite all of this aspect this may indeed be a great Porter. I have a Robust Porter that I brewed a few months ago with an OG = 1.089 and FG = 1.037 and that beer is excellent. Guess what: I used Windsor to brew that batch.

Cheers!

 

Leave it alone and check gravity in another week or so.

BrewCipher predicts 1.024 for this, which is a bit higher than the 1.018 you were expecting. My guess would be attenuation is finished, or pretty close to it.

 

It'll be fine. You'll love it and you have learned something that wasn't in the kit instructions.

As for the OG/FG, are you adjusting the readings to account for the temperatures at the time you took the samples?

 

http://howtobrew.com/book/appendices/appendix-a/using-hydrometers

 

Bubbling always indicates the release of gas from the fermenter and sometimes it indicates fermentation. Introduction of foreign objects such as oak or dry hops provide nucleation points that promote the release of CO2.