High FG

[Battleaxe]

Brewed a porter 14 days ago OG of 1.051 a week at 19c in the fridge it was 1.018 heated it up to 21c for 4 days now back at 19c 7 days later and it's still at 1.018... I Mashed high at 68c and the beer in my gravity test tube is clear and I've seen no action in the airlock for 5+ days... Is it done?

The recipe suggests 1.014 as FG but I threw some Carapils in the mash as an experiment could this be why it's high?

I'm using S-04 yeast

[orlando]

Brewed a porter 14 days ago OG of 1.051 a week at 19c in the fridge it was 1.018 heated it up to 21c for 4 days now back at 19c 7 days later and it's still at 1.018... I Mashed high at 68c and the beer in my gravity test tube is clear and I've seen no action in the airlock for 5+ days... Is it done?

The recipe suggests 1.014 as FG but I threw some Carapils in the mash as an experiment could this be why it's high?

I'm using S-04 yeast

Probably. High mash temp and Carapils will give the yeast a highly dexterous wort. US O5 is not a yeast I have much experience of but have read it is usually a high attenuator. An attenuation of less than 65% will make this a little sweet with little chance of it going down further in the fermentor. Bottling it and leaving it for a few weeks might see it attenuate a little further but be prepared for it to always have a little more body than you like.

[Battleaxe]

I used S-04 so it's more English ale less attenuation than S-05,

The sample I tried was really nice tbh obviously had the unconditioned green beer but overall the body and malts were good I was going for more body with the high mash and Carapils.

[orlando]

I used S-04 so it's more English ale less attenuation than S-05,

The sample I tried was really nice tbh obviously had the unconditioned green beer but overall the body and malts were good I was going for more body with the high mash and Carapils.

Apologies, not paying attention, no idea why I mistook SO4 for SO5, that does change things, so not quite as bad, you may well end up with what you were targeting then, hope you like it.

[Battleaxe]

I used S-04 so it's more English ale less attenuation than S-05,

The sample I tried was really nice tbh obviously had the unconditioned green beer but overall the body and malts were good I was going for more body with the high mash and Carapils.

Apologies, not paying attention, no idea why I mistook SO4 for SO5, that does change things, so not quite as bad, you may well end up with what you were targeting then, hope you like it.

I might go for less priming sugar in the bottle Just in case, it shouldn't need much being a porter.

[Matt12398]

I've brewed a few porters and mashed at 68C and those have tended to finish up around 1.018 and 1.020. They haven't overcarbed in the bottle during conditioning either.

You'll probably find that with a high temp and less fermentable wort that your FG is a little higher.

[IronBlue]

This is about understanding what attenuation you will get for the given yeast at the given mash temperature. This is the dominating factor, much more so than the grist composition or fermenting temperature etc...

S04 is not a particularly high attenuating yeast, I have used it before at 68C and I got 64% attenuation. For an OG of 1.051, 64% gives you an FG of 1.018. Sounds spot on to me.

You can predict this at the recipe stage (google, or build your own database) and adjust the mash temp/yeast accordingly

[Battleaxe]

Cool I was just checking, my calculator indicated 1.014 as an FG and it's so far been spot on, so being 4 points over I thought I would double check!

[Raize]

Personally, I'm getting very low attenutation < 70% using S-04 and US-05 yeast. My mash temperatures are spot-on 64C - I use an STC-1000 to monitor the temperature - so I'm not sure why the attenuation is always so low.

[Kyle_T]

Okay,

So the first issue is a 68 degree mash, this will increase the amount of unfermentable sugars in the wort, for a porter you want to aim lower, somewhere like 64/65 and balance the dryness with the hops, get a good balance.

the second issue is the fermentation temperature, English ale yeasts perform much better at the higher end of the range so somewhere in the region of 21 degrees, this is due to the pitching rate, breweries have a higher cell count than we do as home brewers, fermenting at 19 degrees with curve the growth to the lower end of scale resulting in an earlier flocculation and lower yeast count.

If I was you I would bottle without priming but give it a decent shake per bottle and store somewhere around the 21 degrees mark, this will briefly jolt the yeast out of suspension and eat up some of the remaining sugar. a 1050 porter should reach 1012 with ease on almost any english yeast strain.