Beer S.G. too high?

[Gelu Liber]

I made a John Bull kit and used 2 lbs of dried malt extract in place of sugar as the instructions indicate that you can. The starting S.G. was 1.050 and the instructions do not give you a target starting S.G.


It should only take about 1 week. It fermented pretty aggressively for about 4 days and on the 7th I checked S.G. and it was 1.020. It needs to be around 1.006.

I checked it yet another week later and it is not moving from 1.020.


Is there something I should do or should have done? Was the starting S.G. too high? Is this batch shot?

 

[Wade E]

What type of beer is this and what are the temps, also what yeast did you use.

 

[Gelu Liber]

I used the yeast that came with the kit.It was a lager but the malt was bavarian wheat. The temperature has been 70F.

 

[Wade E]

I cant figure why the yeast would stop then but will just say to make another yeast starter with a Nottingham Ale yeast o finish it up.

 

[smurfe]

First off, what type of kit were you making (style)? That OG sounds withing spec for many styles. Might be a bit high for a wheat beer but not to bad. Did you stir the wort good when you added the wort to water in the fermenter? 1.020 is definitely not a good FG though. The beer will be way too sweet and cloying.


It sounds like either you had very poor attenuation (fermentation efficiency)from your yeast or there was a mistake reading the hydrometer. With 4 days of hard fermentation you should of had fermentation to 1.005 or so. That is the average fermentation time for most batches. You probably had poor attenuation though.


I can't stress enough that if one is making an extract kit to forget the yeast that comes with them even exists and buy either a liquid yeast or buy a couple packs of the appropriate Fermentis dry yeast. At least get another pack of the Coopers or what ever type of yeast that comes with them and pitch 2 packs if you don't rehydrate the yeast.


A few questions though, did you boil the wort? If so did you re-oxygenate it prior to pitching the yeast. Normally with extract kits just pouring the wort into the fermenter and adding the additional tap water to fill to level will oxygenate plenty good enough. Also, what was the temp of the wort when adding the yeast? If it were still too warm from the boil you could of killed a percentage of the viable yeast cells.


Thereare a multitude of problems that could attribute but most I feelare due to viable yeast cell counts in the packages of yeast provided.