I rushed along the holiday ale I brewed in hopes that it would be ready for my New Years Eve party. The result was less than good. Last night I decided to pull a sample, let it warm to room temp and go flat, and check the FG. The the results are an FG of 1.022. Is checking the FG after its been kegged and carbed accurate? If yes, can I do anything about this? When I racked to the keg, I did harvest the yeast so I do have access. Thoughts?
Repeated from other thread:
I think if you let the sample go flat then yes the reading should be accurate. If you were in a rush then this could explain the lack of attenuation. You can pitch in more yeast to get fermentation going again but you might want to consider a highly attenuative yeast. Also it will need to be a very active yeast starter with a big rolling krausen or else it won’t work – simple pitching in a couple packs of non-started yeast won’t help, it needs to be a big active starter. What yeast did you use the first time around? What’s the recipe?
The yeast I used was Wyeast 1028 london ale. The recipe is here: http://www.northernbrewer.com/documenta … warmer.pdf
I purchased it because of the very short time from kettle to pour. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the reason for the problem is due to my lack of planning.
With that said, can I bring it to room temp, release the pressure in the keg, open, pitch the yeast, and seal back up? Would this create a keg bomb? Even if I bleed it off periodically? Should I rack back to a carboy?
It might not ferment much more with the same yeast. It was within 3 or 4 specific gravity points of where I would have expected it to end up. If you want to try this, then make a starter with your harvested yeast and pitch it into your keg. I don’t think you really need to take it out of the keg, you should be able to continue the ferment directly in there. I’d warm it up though to around 70 F (room temp). You should leave the top cracked open, as yeast can be unhappy if forced to ferment under pressure. Give the yeast another week or two to finish up with the warm ferment, and then hopefully the final gravity will be closer to 1.018-1.019.
If you want to guarantee better attenuation, then make a starter out of US-05, which can bring the gravity down to the low 1.010s.
In any case, make your starter a couple days ahead of time, and don’t pitch it until the starter is very vigorous. Otherwise this won’t work.
Good luck!!
The holiday ale isn’t drain worthy but its close. I may try the 05 just to see what happens. Worth the experiment because it cant get much worse. Thanks again for all of the help.
It may just be green. I read that recipe and to me it sounds like a beer that would need a little more time.
