Not sure what’s up here, two weeks ago I brewed the NB Bourbon Barrel porter extract kit and everything went great. OG was 1.065. Cooled the wort to around 64* ad pitched two packs of Danstar Windsor and kept the fermentation temp in the low 60’s. Had a bit of blowoff the first 24 hours and quite a bit of activity in the blowoff bucket for the first 4 days or so.
After a week I removed the blowoff assembly to replace it with a standard airlock at which point I took a gravity reading and it was around 1.025. I took it out of the swamp cooler and brought it up to high 60’s low 70’s in hopes to convince the yeast to finish the job. There were a few bubbles in the airlock over that time but not enough to see it move. It’s now 5 days later and I decided to take another reading and it hasn’t even budged. Still at 1.025.
Any idea on how to get the gravity down or anyway to get the ABV up (adding more fermentables)? I really wanted this to be around the high 6% to low 7% area.
From the web site: Moderate attenuation, which will leave a relatively high gravity.
http://www.danstaryeast.com/products/windsor-ale-yeast
There are a couple of reference to high FG on the NB review page.
Currently attenuation is ~61% and 5.5%ABV.
If you were to get to 1.015, that would be 77% and 6.6%ABV. So your ABV expectations are a bit high IMO.
You could try pitching some s-05. I would rehydrate it first. Possibly add it to a little DME to get it going and then add it to the fermenter.
Not too familiar with average attenuations for different yeasts, would mid to high 70’s be too high to expect for this yeast?
Of course I will be adding 16oz of bourbon to the beer in secondary so I suppose that should boost the alcohol up a little.
Maybe add 1 pound table sugar. That will boost the abv and may get the yeast going again and take a few more points off. 1 lb in 5 gal adds .008
With the manufactures reference to moderate attenuation and the dark LME, I’m guessing it finished. With that yeast.
gdtechvw’s thought of some simple sugar and adding some s-05 may help. I don’t think sugar alone will do anything.
Thanks for the input guys
^^^This. Or even add more if you want more alcohol. It’s your beer. Do what you like with it. Next time trade a pound or two of extract for table sugar up front, and/or use a more attenuative yeast, and avoid the problem altogether.
^^^This. Or even add more if you want more alcohol. It’s your beer. Do what you like with it. Next time trade a pound or two of extract for table sugar up front, and/or use a more attenuative yeast, and avoid the problem altogether.[/quote]
Sure adding some simple sugar will boost the ABV. I don’t believe it will do anything for the FG.
Even the perceived sweetness will not diminish with the higher ABV. At least that was my experience with a 19% mead that had a FG of 1.030.
Nighthawk is right too. A small “starter” of US-05 might take things down a few more points for this batch. You could even use a saison yeast like Danstar Belle Saison. Now that would take it down lower, and without significant flavor effect because the beer is already like 80% done fermenting.
