doing a christmas brew (spices, orange zest, brandy soaked dired fruit etc. added to boil at various stages) and aiming for a high ABV so intended to get about 1.092 on my OG reading based on about 6.8kg extract (no other sugars, but some speciality grains e.g crystal and chocolate malt). Actual OG reading was 1.102
. It was in primary for one week with safale s-04 and then transferred to secondary and added some champagne yeast. When I transferred to secondary last weekend the grav was 1.030, now (just over one week after transfer) it is still 1.030. Is this normal for such a high grav beer or should I be looking for the FG to fall some more before bottling? do you think the other adjuncts and non fermenatbles could be pushing the grav reading up to give a false reading?
I'm a bit dissapointed that the chapagne yeast doesn't seem to have done anything, I thought that the safale was only good for up to about 8.5 abv so was using the more alcohol tolerant champagne yeast to finish the secondary but it seems to have done bugger all.
I've just tried aerating the wort to see if that kick starts the fermentation again but if it doesn't what should I do?
It's all a bit of an experiment really (to hell with the instruction manual
), but I'd really appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.Many thanks in advance.
PS, hope all your xmas brews are going according to plan
PPS, what do you think to the names "Candy Caned", "Santa's Smashed" or "Yule get Pi$$ed"
