I brewed a brown ale on 8/30 and started with an OG of 1056. Checked gravity Thursday 9/10 and it was at 1018. Checked again Sunday and its still 1018 but that seems really high to me. Is it stalled, stuck, done the best it's gonna do? My only thoughts to get it lower are pitch more yeast and let it warm up. Here's the particulars: 5 Gal. Recipe: 6.6 lb Marris Otter LME 1 lb Dark DME .5 lb roasted barley steeped for 30 mins at 155ish degrees .5lb light brown sugar 1 oz Kent goldings @60min 1 oz Fuggles @10min Yeast: 1 pack S-04 rehydrated per the manufacturers directions Fermented at 63 degrees first two days then I started bringing it up a degree every day until I got to 67. Oxygenated by shaking the crap out of the fermenter prior to pitching. Fermentation seemed "normal" with good krausen and lots of activity. Any suggestions?
67% apparent attenuation is low for what s-04 is advertised as attenuating at, %75. I had problems getting dark lme and dme beers attenuating fully when I was doing extract brewing. The one and only time I used dark extract I had an imperial stout finish at 66% attenuation with chico and subsequently stopped using dark extract from then on.
It's the extract. Yep, that's the best it's going to do. If you want more attenuation, then make another gallon-sized starter with US-05 and add it in there. Wait for fermentation to complete and you'll be golden. The US-05 will bring the gravity down farther than S-04, without major impact on flavor.
Don't know why I went with dark...I think I was afraid of it not being brown enough. This is my second stab at a brown ale that has come in way under-attenuated....oddly enough though I've done stouts that came out with no problem and they were a good bit higher in the OG. Either way I think this second "failure to launch" brown is enough to make me stop using extract and go all grain. Time permitting. Everything I've ever heard or read says "no starter with dry yeast." It's one of the reasons I use dry yeasts LOL!!! Do you think just a pack of 05 rehydrated would help or just be adding more crap to the pile?
Yeast doesn't like to be added to beer that's already fermented out. There's not much to eat and there's a lot of alcohol, which they don't like. Making a starter gets them ready for the road ahead and helps them to hit the decks running when they get into your already fermented beer. Anyway, this wouldn't be a traditional starter. It's more like a second small batch of beer. Throw some hops in there with it too (maybe 1/8 oz or something like that) and boil for 15-30 minutes.
If you used more light extract in your stouts with a minimal bump in dark extracts I would expect to see more attenuation.
Maybe because you really wanted a more robust and darker flavor. I recently bottled a stout as well using all dark extract. 6lbs of dark LME, 1lbs of dark DME, as well as some black patent and roasted barley for steeping. OG 1.056, FG -1.017 with WLP 004. I'm looking forward to November
Well I decided to just say "F-it" and started cold crashing it. Not worth all that fuss. I'll be the only one drinking it anyway. Next time, all grain.
I prefer all grain, but next time you could always use lme and depend on steeping darker grains for color
I guess I'll just set this here as well for future reference... right click, save picture, and print in landscape...
Thanks dm. I'll keep it for future use. I find extract meets my needs for shortened sessions (having 7 year olds takes up a lot of my time lol) so I won't say this is going to be my last extract brew ever but I'm eager to get into all grain. Thanks kellyst....usually I prefer DME to LME but I was wanting to make something with Marris Otter and I've only ever seen it as LME. My usual base is a mix of grains for color plus a pound or two of base malt for a mini-mash/biab type thing. Then the DME for the majority of the fermentables. So far I've had good results.
There's some pretty good advice there for new brewers. I might quibble with a couple things, but I think a newbie wouldn't go wrong following it. One thing in particular you might want to check though... the ratio of table sugar to corn sugar for equivalent carbonation is closer to 91%, vice the 80% cited. It's because about 9% of corn sugar (glucose monohydrate) is water. Some calculators seem to use (inexplicably) 95%.
The 80% takes into account my personal opinion that 3/4 cup sugar for 5 gallons often/usually results in very high carbonation, and I don't like that. If I'm going to generate my own standard guidance, I'm going to do it my way.
Agree with all the previous advice, but might add that manufacturer attenuation stats are just estimates and use a standard grainbill (that is not disclosed). S-04 is a high floccer and might need to be roused. Additionally, some batches trap a lot of CO2 and will throw off FG hydrometer readings...let the sample sit for an hour (or longer sometimes) to degas...or better yet, just taste it.
