Stuck fermentation? Or should I just bottle and hope?

[curtw]

I've got a 3-gallon IPA from extract that's been in primary (bucket) for 27 days, and the gravity is around 1.020.

I had issues with this brew from the start. I had too much water boil off, and so only got 2 gallons from the kettle to bucket when I pitched the yeast. About 40 hours later, I added another gallon of (boiled/cooled) water.

As a result, the OG was very very high -- like 1.110 or so; it seems likely to me that I didn't do my yeast any favors like this. (WPL001 liquid yeast, quite fresh). Also, the first 2.5 weeks were at pretty cold temps (~60F), though the last week+ was at about 67F or so.

On the plus side, the beer tastes okay to me right now. My question is: If the gravity doesn't go down in the next few days, should I just bottle it and hope? Or should I wait longer, even if gravity doesn't seem to be changing? Or something else?

My last beer was tremendously over-carbed -- I'm pretty sure I bottled too early, and I really don't want this to happen again.

Thanks!

 

[Revvy]

Are you sure it's stuck, or not just finished? A beer can be stuck usually if the temp suddenly drops to the yeasts dormancy/flocculation point. So swirling warming does indeed work. Or rarely the yeast tires out, and swirling it back into suspension will help bring it down a few more points.

But what most new brewers think is a stuck fermentation is usually a matter of the yeast eating all the fermentables and finishing high, like what we call the 1.020 or 1.030 curse. If you mashed too high and got a lot of unfermentables, or in the case of extract, a lot of unfermentables/caramelization. Nothing you can do short of maybe adding an alpha amalaze to "break" the unfermentable sugars down will work.

Swirling won't, warming it up won't, heck even adding more yeast won't. A beer can be done high, and nothing's really wrong.

For example I have a barleywine that is FINISHED at 1.040. The og was 1.170 and it has a lot of caramel malts and extremely dark (50 year old) honey in it. That dark translates into unfermentable sugars. It's been multiply yeasted, and has been sitting in a tertiary for close to two years. Despite the numbers it is finished, NOT STUCK, there's just nothing left for the yeast to eat.

Is this an extract beer? There's what is known as the 1.020 curse, where a lot of extract batches tend to peter out at that point. Making sure you have put in plenty of oxygen and yeast on brew day helps. But some beer seem to stick regardless. A lot of that I think has to do with wort caramelization, where both the process of making and boiling the extract produces or converts some of the sugars into unfermentable ones.

 

[curtw]

I'm not sure that it's stuck. Like I said, I'm gonna keep swirling + measuring for a few days.

But thanks for the "stuck" vs "done" info. I'll probably end up bottling soon, I just hope I don't have bottle bombs.

Would you advise to use less priming sugar than usual, in my case?

Thanks!

 

[MotorcycleMatt]

I'm not sure that it's stuck. Like I said, I'm gonna keep swirling + measuring for a few days.

But thanks for the "stuck" vs "done" info. I'll probably end up bottling soon, I just hope I don't have bottle bombs.

Would you advise to use less priming sugar than usual, in my case?

Thanks!

If its done you want to use the regular amount of priming sugar you would have used.

If its not done don't bottle it til it is. I would guess that it is done though