Russian Imperial Stout not completing

[dunleav1]

A fermentation problem.
I made a a russian imperial stout three weeks ago. Original gravity was 1.094 and I'm stuck at 1.044.
I'm using wlp004 and pitched 500 ml of yeast slurry I harvested off a lower gravity previous brew.
I started at 67 and raised the temperature to 72 as fermentation slowed.

When I washed my yeast I'm thinking I didn't get as much yeast as I thought I did.
I'm thinking of buying another vial of wlp004 or wlp001 and making a starter and pitching at high krausen.
Is it possible to drop this beer below 1.030 or am I stuck with a imperial sweet stout?

Thanks,
JD

[Elbone]

I'd say making a new, well-oxygenated starter (I'd use WLP001, it's a good attenuator) and pitching at high kraeusen is your best bet for getting fermentation going again. Hopefully you can squeeze a few more points out of it.

[dunleav1]

Forgot to mention:
I added two minutes of oxygen at initial yeast pitch
Initial yeast was added to a starter an ran on a plate for 12 hours.
I did a 120 minute as opposed to 90 minute boil on this beer because my volume came out about 1 gallon higher than I wanted after sparge.

I'm going to try the wlp001 at high krausen and hope for the best.

[dunleav1]

Forgot to mention:
I added two minutes of oxygen at initial yeast pitch
Initial yeast was added to a starter an ran on a plate for 12 hours.
I did a 120 minute as opposed to 90 minute boil on this beer because my volume came out about 1 gallon higher than I wanted after sparge.

I'm going to try the wlp001 at high krausen and hope for the best.

I ended up just letting the original yeast do it's job. After six months in secondary it was down to 1.037, which is the target FG for this recipe.

[Sent From My iPhone]

[brewinhard]

You could always try drying it out with some rehydrated Us-05, or lalvin EC-1118 champagne yeast, or my personal favorite Brett B.

[dunleav1]

It's good, really fucking good.

I'm letting it age another 6 months like JZ recommends.


There is no need to dry it out anymore, I hit the FG for the recipe.

[dunleav1]

I just tapped this keg after a year. It's worth the wait.

I'm going to fill a few bottles of this for laying down to see how it ages.