Has this finished fermenting?

[vitalogy]

I've had a Cooper's Premium Selection Australian Bitter in primary for 9 days. I used the following ingredients:
1.7kg Cooper's Australian Bitter kit
1.5kg Cooper's Light Liquid Malt
400g Maltodextrin
12g Hops (Cascade)
Yeast supplied with kit

The OG was 1048, and after 9 days it seems to be stuck on 1018. This seems a bit high to me. Does this sound like a reasonable FG, or do I have some dodgy yeast, or should I just leave it a bit longer? The airlock stopped bubbling after about 4 days, but the gravity kept on dropping until a couple of days ago. I'm quite happy to bottle it, but I just don't want any explosions!

[yardglass]

vita,
a couple of things, what temp is it at and can you rack it ?

i recommend the latter if you think it's not done.

yardy

[vitalogy]

Believe it or not, we've had some warm weather down here in Tassie - it's been kept at around 20-24 degrees. I had fairly vigourous airlock action for the first 4 days, then it stopped, but the gravity kept dropping until 7 days. Since then it's stopped.

I could rack it, but not until Wednesday - would leaving the brew on the primary yeast cake for this long give me crappy flavours?

If I did rack, I was thinking of racking onto about 100g of dissolved dextrose, just to get the yeast going again. Does that sound worthwhile?

[yardglass]

I could rack it, but not until Wednesday - would leaving the brew on the primary yeast cake for this long give me crappy flavours?

If I did rack, I was thinking of racking onto about 100g of dissolved dextrose, just to get the yeast going again. Does that sound worthwhile?

i've left brews in the primary for up to 23 days when i've been away working and they've been fine.
i never racked these long stayers, didn't see the point.

never racked onto any fermentable to tell the truth, but....
racking has always, always dropped a couple of points off FG.

IMHO, leave it until wed, rack onto a Hop Tea of your choice and bottle when you can.

yard

[gregb]

Also try giving the fermenter a gentle swirl to get some of the yeast back out of suspension and back to making alcohol from all that sugar.

Cheers,
Greg

[vitalogy]

Alright, cheers guys, I'll let you know how it goes. I have high hope for this brew, fingers crossed

[vitalogy]

Well I've bought a racking hose, and plan on transferring into my secondary ferementer tonight. It's now been 11 days in primary, and the gravity is still stuck on 1018.

My question is, should I rack onto some dissolved dextrose to fire the yeast up again? There's been no activity now for about 4 days, and I'm thinking if I don't add some dex I won't get any CO2 in the headspace?

I was also wondering, could this high FG be due to the fact I would have quite a bit of unfermentable sugar? IIRC malt doesn't fully ferment away, and maltodextrin possibly not at all.

Edit: Bugger it; I sent the GF into the HBS to get a racking hose, and the HBS guy sold her a bottling tube So anyway, for better or for worse, I'll bottle this brew tonight and hope for the best!

[wiggins]

I had a brew that was stuck on 1014 sg for 2 days,and when i rang the homebrew guy up and told him the story,he told me to bottle it straight away,even though it was only 4 days old.The reason for this was that he reckoned the yeast cake could turn to vegemite if i left it any longer,so i bottled it and have had no explosions since then,5 days ago.His reasoning behind this was that if i found too much pressure in one of the bottles after 4 or 5 days i could pop the seal and release the pressure and then put it back under the bottle capper to reseal them

[Dogger Dan]

I really need to go to myth busters on this one

Dogger

[501]

This long in primary,
Could be risky racking now.
most of the infections found on searches happened like this.

maybe try tipping and rolling fermenter as GregB said.

cheers 501