I was brewing at a good clip in the 90’s, I was always doing specialty grains and extract brews…then I had kids, and a tougher job and travel… blah blah
Anyway I got back into it, and I picked up a conical fermenter, I got a few cases of grolsh bottles on Craigslist, one of those SG readers you put a drop of liquid on.. we are all good it is all much simpler. I started remaking my recipes of yesteryear I thought It would be easy.. I had a wonderful Russian Imperial Stoudt recipe…so I decided to look at my notes and remake it.... I overshot the SG a bit, (a 7 gallon batch) It started with an SG of 1.125…. so I was looking for a 10% brew.. ok..worrysome but not that bad. However after fermenting for about 10 days it stalled at 1.070. It has been almost two months since then....I have added yeast (3 times, ale and champagne), I have Increased the temp (by putting outside, not in the A/C), I have drained the trub.. all with no effect. It is still at 1.070... (note it still smells like beer)
So what I just did today, was pull it inside (@70F), pull the trub out, and then I pulled a gallon from the bottom and put it in my ukeg, (which will allow me to force carbonate with CO2 the gallon in about 3 days), and I pitched the (hydrated) champagne yeast (again). the wort now tastes ok… but really bitter... I was not expecting that…
I am also worried about the odd ingredients I put in there (I did get carried away), so for the 7 gallons brew… along with the 23 lbs of extract I added 2.2 lbs of Agave, 1 lb of oats about ¾ lb of dark sugar and 4 oz of Hershey powder… I am wondering if I went too far with the ingredients, but it was a full 1 ¼ hour boil of the extracts…
Any ideas on what to do here… I will report back when the ukeg comes out..
Thanks in Advance….