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Final Gravity seems high

Northern Brewer General
#1

So I am going to brew a chocolate porter within the next month for this fall, and I am working on my recipe. The problem I am getting, is that the Final Gravity seems really high and I don’t know how to get it down.

Liquid Malt Extract - Dark 10.0 lb
Special B (BE) 0.25 lb 2 % Steep
Black Patent (UK) 0.25 lb 2 % Steep
Chocolate (BE) 0.25 lb 2 % Steep

1 oz of Northern Brewer @ 60 mins

WLP007 English Yeast

8 oz unsweetened cocoa powder @ FO

1.071 OG
1.018 FG
27 IBU
7.0% ABV
37 SRM

I would like the FG to be a little bit lower, but I don’t know what to do.

Any suggestions.

Thanks

Justin

#2

Since you are already using a dark extract I would leave out the Black Patent Malt. It is hard to get most LME fg down any lower with all that malt. Try to use a malt that dries out well. Briess LME has worked well for me. Also substitute some malt with sugar. Sugar is 100% fermentable malt is 80%. You could can try to replace 0.5 pounds malt with 0.80 pounds of sugar.
Make sure you use the correct amount of yeast. For that beer you will need a 3.8 litter simple starter. And use 02 at start then again after about an hour.

#3

I agree with Dunngood. In addition higher FG is something that plagues extract beers.

#4

Okay, I have adjusted my recipe a little bit to remove some of the malt and replace it with sugar. It got me a little closer to a normal final gravity. I will brew with what I am planning now, and see how it turns out. Thanks for the advice.

#5

Keep in mind that the FG estimate is just that. I find that the calculated FG numbers usually aren’t very close to reality. With extract the number will probably be closer than with all grain but, your yeast selection, cell count, viability, wort oxygenation, yeast nutrient and fermentation regime can all play a role in how low it goes.

#6

+1 to everything mentioned above. And one more thing…

That beer is going to be awfully sweet with just one ounce of hops in there. I would add at least another half ounce of hops to help balance all that sugar.

Enjoy.

#7

[quote=“dmtaylo2”]+1 to everything mentioned above. And one more thing…

That beer is going to be awfully sweet with just one ounce of hops in there. I would add at least another half ounce of hops to help balance all that sugar.

Enjoy.[/quote]
Dave nailed it.

I like to look at the gravity-to-ibu ratio. You have 27/71=0.38
Porters want to be a bit higher, 0.55-0.72 or even higher for a more robust porter. For a chocolate porter I can see staying closer to the lower end, but that’s pretty far off the bottom.

#8

One of the easiest ways to lower the FG and make a beer less sweet is to lower the OG. Changing this from an Imperial Porter with an OG of 1.070 to a Brown or Robust Porter near 1.050 would drop an FG of 1.018 down around 1.013. I found it difficult to make high gravity extract beers that didn’t finish sweet.

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