porter stopped fermenting after 3 dys?!

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Graeme
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Joined: Mon Nov 19, 2007 5:53 am

porter stopped fermenting after 3 dys?!

Post by Graeme »

Ok so as per my last post i brewed my porter on Saturday gone. Now, fermentation was slow to begin with, but then on monday it rocketed along, now it has an Gravity of 1022 and has appeared to have stoped fermenting....any advice on this? i would hate if this was ruined, it was fermenting at normal temp of 20 c which should be more than fine. i used Fermentis s-04, have heard this can be a bit up and down..any help?
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slothrob
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Post by slothrob »

S-04 is a famously quick finisher. Only time will tell if it's really finished, but we can guess if that is close to your expected FG from a few facts:

What was your OG? The higher the OG, the higher the FG, all things being equal.

What was the recipe, particularly, how much Crystal Malt was in the recipe? A lot of Crystal Malts (say a pound or more) can leave the beer with a high FG. I see you used about 1 1/3 # of Crystal Malts (including the Chocolate), that will tend to finish higher. With extract recipes, in particular, I like to try and keep the Crystal close to 0.5-0.75# unless I purposefully want a sweet beer.

Is this an extract recipe, and did it use Dark extract? Dark extracts tend to have more unfermentable sugars, leading to a higher FG. Well, you didn't use dark extract, but it is an extract recipe, which will finish a bit higher.

All-in-all, 1.020 still seems a little high, but I doubt you'll finish below 1.015. Give it another week, swirl it a few times to resuspend the yeast, but if the gravity doesn't drop, that's where it's going to end.
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