BREWFERM DARK ABBEY (ABDIJ) BEER-TOO HIGH FG

[Munchy102]

Hi there, right i'm once again having problems reaching final gravity on my brewferm dark abbey beer. It is sitting at 1018, I have tried adding extra yeast to get starting again but to no avail. Its say's on instructions needs to be below 1010. I have a heating belt on it, don't have it on all the time as there is only 9 litres and i don't want to boil the stuff!!! Any advice would be greatly appreciated as i don't wanna lose this one! Thanks
Andy :hmm:

 

[jackmorgan]

I had the same problem I ended up with an FG of about 1016. I have brewed the Brewferm Pils (20lt) before and that ended up on the high side as well. That turned out to be very nice after 8 weeks in the bottle. The abbey I just batch primed and bottled about a month ago, no exploding bottles and seems to be starting to clear :pray: .The initial gravity was about 1074 ( i think) so I figured anything near 1010 would do. Sorry I can't be more helpful but it sounds finished to me. I think the final Vol % is about 8% :mrgreen:

 

[Parva]

If it was around the 1.074 mark then 1.018 is quite a respectable figure to get down to. Yeast can only attenuate so far and the higher the starting gravity then generally the higher the final gravity will be (unless you use something like wine or champagne yeast which is just wrong). :)

Ignore the kit instructions about getting below 1.010. This is quite normal with wines and ciders but for beers it has an adverse effect. My beers (~5%) tend to finish around 1.014 - 1.016 and I'm perfectly happy with this. The lower the final gravity is the higher the alcohol content is BUT the alcohol comes at the expense of body in the beer. It's much better to have a beer that has body and flavour at the expense of a few points of alcohol than have a beer that resembles White Ace 7.5% paint stripper! :) If it did start in the 1.070 range then I'd say 1.018 is absolutely fine and if it remains constant for two days I'd happilly keg / bottle it.