Another Stuck Fermentation - BB American Pale Wheat

[ThatITGuy]

I'll give a bit of a information first, this is was my first extract kit with Specialty grains.
The kit was Brewer's Best - American Pale Wheat. It had expired (2 years past), but I brewed it anyway, using fresh re-hydrated Nottingham. I wasn't expecting much, but I did it for the experience to familiarize myself with the process.

Now, I understand using expired ingredients is likely the cause of the stuck fermentation.
My OG was 1.048 (target was 1.054) this was most likely cause by doing a partial boil, and adding (too much) water. That's not a concern for me.

I checked the gravity after 5 days at 65F and it had reached 1.022 (3.4%ABV)
5 days later no change.

At this point, I'm thinking I'll just bottle & prime as-is, But I am curious to know if there is any chance of boosting the ABV at this point?

The beer tastes okay, I'm not going to be dumping it so I wanted to get more experienced folk's opinion whether anything can improve it.

 

[mirthfuldragon]

1.022 is pretty sweet for me, but I like drier beers. I would give it a swirl and check back in a few days to see if the yeast pick back up, but Nottingham is aggressive so I don't have a lot of hope for it being a yeast issue. I presume you are checking gravity with a hydrometer and not a refractometer? Any airlock activity?

Personally, I would throw brett at it and check back in six months. The grain bill (wheat and pale) is reasonably close to lambics or other traditional "sour" grain bills, and brett can chew through complex sugars that regular saccharomyces cannot. Some of the brett strains are milder than others, so your own personal preference can come into play.

 

[kingmatt]

I'll give a bit of a information first, this is was my first extract kit with Specialty grains.
The kit was Brewer's Best - American Pale Wheat. It had expired (2 years past), but I brewed it anyway, using fresh re-hydrated Nottingham. I wasn't expecting much, but I did it for the experience to familiarize myself with the process.

Now, I understand using expired ingredients is likely the cause of the stuck fermentation.
My OG was 1.048 (target was 1.054) this was most likely cause by doing a partial boil, and adding (too much) water. That's not a concern for me.

I checked the gravity after 5 days at 65F and it had reached 1.022 (3.4%ABV)
5 days later no change.

At this point, I'm thinking I'll just bottle & prime as-is, But I am curious to know if there is any chance of boosting the ABV at this point?

The beer tastes okay, I'm not going to be dumping it so I wanted to get more experienced folk's opinion whether anything can improve it.

Did you buy it 2 years expired? If so, I'd take it back and stop going to that store...

You will taste a major difference compared to fresh extract and that is likely the reason you stalled out at 1.022.

You could pitch some Brett at this point, if you have the patience to let them do their thing you may end up with something interesting.