Hi. I brewed an extract Sweet Milk Stout kit that my daughter gave me on 3/30, and it seemed to start out just fine. I hit the target OK of 1.062, and it appeared to ferment appropriately. But I transferred it to secondary yesterday (4/13) and measured the gravity, and it was at 1.037. Maybe I’m off, but that seems high to me. Am I wrong about that?
Aw, man, you shouldn’t have racked it, you removed most of the yeast to keep fermenting it. Yeah, that gravity seems extremely high even for a sweet stout. How much lactose was in the recipe? What yeast did you use? What is the temperature? In any case you should certainly warm it up a few degrees to help wake up your remaining yeast.
Ah, didn’t think of that. There was a pound of lactose, and I used 1 packet of Cooper’s ale yeast. I generally use liquid yeast, but this came with the kit, so I thought why not just go with it. Temp is at 68F. I’ve got a heat wrap and thermostat control, so does 72 sound good, or warmer? Thanks for the reply.
Yeah, 72 F should help if it’s going to finish at any lower gravity, which it might not. My experience with Cooper’s yeast is that it is a pretty high attenuator, so hopefully you just need another week and it keeps going. I hope so. Good luck.
I’ll be patient. Hard, but doable. Thanks!
Felt I should post back and let folks know that this ‘issue’ was not really an issue at all, but rather a total brain fart on my part. Yeah, the gravity when I transferred it to secondary was indeed 1.037, but I forgot to mention that I use a refractometer to measure, and I totally forgot to do the calculations. Just extremely busy at work and home, and trying to cram in the hobby, I just completely forgot. It wasn’t until a couple days ago that it hit me what I did. So, I had a starting gravity of 1.061 (15.0 brix) and a final gravity of 9.3 brix (1.022 sg calculated), which brings it to an expected 4.8% ABV, as was about expected. Live and learn.
I am getting ready to bottle this in a few days and did a gravity. I hit the target OG but I got 1.023 (after 10 days)= at first, I figured it still has some time to go before it finishes. It started fermenting with no problems and seemed to finish with the krausen falling after day 3 or so. I was a little surprised it hadn’t finished fermenting yet.
But then I thought about it and realized I forgot to take the lactose into consideration (never used it before this brew). :idea:
