Wherry stuck at 1.020

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donny_1972

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My Woodfordes Wherry has been fermenting for 7 days now and seems to be stuck at 1.020. The og was 1.040 so this would only make it 2.7%. Can anyone help me out here as iam unsure what to do next.
 
Donny,

I'd leave it for a little longer. The timescales in the instructions are on the optimistic side. Keep an eye on the temperature, if it's a little bit cold, move to somewhere around 20 deg C. If you still have no joy, give it a gentle stir...

Its worth the wait :)

Cheers
Simon
 
As simon's advice, there are lots of posts on Wherry getting stuck, I just did a forum search on "wherry stuck" tons of it. ;)
Didn't read it cos I left kits some six years ago, nothing wrong with them, but not my thing these days :lol:
S
 
I got some on the go and it appeared to stop fermenting and lifted the FV up on the side in the morning to let it settle, in the afternoon went to bottle it , but decided to take a reading and it was the same as yours. so i moved it to beside a radiator.
The moving and the heat has got it going again and one of 2 bubbles every minute and a bit.
I am going to leave it for a few more days at least
 
It really is important to keep to he correct temperature to achieve the expected time, it can make one help of a difference to the point of no action. ;)
I used to struggle when the temperature went down at night, when the central heating was off, the yeasties did not like the yo-yo effect :)
Insulation is the first easy step, after that loads of options, placement, mats, water baths, cupboards, aquarium heaters, wait for summer, no not a good idea, :) etc.
S
 
Gave it a stir and a few days later its dropped to 1.018 which makes it just 2.9%. A bit dissapointing as the pack states it should be 4.5%. I want to make my next one a bit stronger so could anyone advise me on how much sugar to add whan i make my next kit up? Also ordered some safale yeast to see if this improves things any.
 
Yep, I reckon the number 1 cause of under-attentuation, especially for kits is (lack of) temperature control. Keep it constant and around 20 degrees for the win :thumb:
 
I Keep my fv in a hot press and my temp is monitored every few hrs (exept when iam sleeping). My thermometer also records high and low temps so iam very confident that it has not been to hot or too cold. My lowest has been 19c and my highest 20.5c.
 
To be honest i cant remember. But as i said i have ordered some safale for my next kit.
 
Moley said:
Ceejay said:
Mmm, it could be that pesky kit yeast. How big is the packet of yeast in these things?
Probably not much more than 5g.

That'll be the reason then; a 5 gallon batch of 1040 beer should really have 8g pitched. I wonder if it would be worth pitching more rehydrated yeast to finish this off... :hmm:
 
You would think muntons who make wherry should have addressed this problem by now. After all it is a premium kit.
 
I have managed to get it down to 1.014 after a couple of stirs. Should i bottle it now?
 
Cool, I'd wait a day to check the reading is the same. Also, you might want to leave it for another week to let the yeast clean up some of the funky tasting by-products it will have produced. That's really up to you though, and how "clean" you want your beer to taste ;)
 
Up to a point. You're going to want to get it off the trub (yeast and crud) at some point, as the yeast will go into autolysis after a while, i.e they die off and start eating each other which will produce some pretty horrible flavours (think cooked meat!). About a week is probably ideal, but you can leave beer in the FV for probably 4 or so weeks without any real bad stuff happening (say if you went on holiday or something)

The common term for this is "diacetyl rest", because the yeast assimilate diacetyl that they produce at the start of the ferment. diacetyl is said to impart a "butterscotch" taste.
 
Ceejay said:
... which will produce some pretty horrible flavours (think cooked meat!). ...
I've had this happen with a couple of kits that I've left for 3 weeks, I've found the longest I can leave a brew in the FV is 2.5 weeks before I start to get some meaty smells at the bottom of the FV. The first time I smelt it, I thought the other half was cooking her hot pot. So far, I've managed to catch it before it has done any major damage to anything :pray: .
 
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