Bottling a Doom Bar clone at high SG

Question

Bonjour,

I have brewed a Doom Bar clone. I was aiming at an Original gravity of 1.045 but only managed 1.041. Unfortunately I lost temperature in the ferment and it stuck at 1.020 after 7 days and has remained here. I heated it up and stirred but no action. I have now racked and am clarifying at 4°C. I am going to bottle tommorow. Should I add priming sugar? I am afraid of bottles exploding.

Any advice appreciated

You don't say what your recipe and process were, so this probably cannot be answered definitively. However, priming sugar probably isn't going to be the determining factor on the fact that you are creating bottle bombs. If you are brave enough to decide to bottle at this point, then I suggest that you think about how to mitigate the danger/mess when they start to go off (and maybe create another question for that issue). — Rob, Apr 26 '22 at 15:50
FYI: "Doom Bar" is a 4.3% AbV English Amber Ale. Recipe Ref: https://brew-bake-make.blogspot.com/2014/06/doom-bar-clone.html — Kingsley, May 11 '22 at 23:19

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered May 04 '22 at 10:49

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You could be looking at either a stuck fermentation (which may resume in the bottle and produce bottle bombs) or a high percentage of unfermentable sugars in the wort. Which one it is I can't say on the basis of what you write here.

The safe course would be to transfer it to a secondary fermentation vessel and let it sit there for another week or two before bottling. In general, an apparent attenuation of only just over 50% would give me concerns about exploding bottles. I would suggest you try to rouse the yeast, secondary the beer, and see what happens.

answered May 04 '22 at 10:49

Frank van Wensveen

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I'd like to add - bottle into PET / plastic bottles. They hold more pressure, and don't produce glass shards. – Kingsley May 11 '22 at 23:14
I prefer glass because I age most of my batches (at least in part) for more than 3 months and I find PET loses carbonation and eventually allows oxygen ingress. YMMV based on the quality of the PET bottles you can get in your neck of the woods. That said, I find the argument that PET holds more pressure to the point where glass bottled would burst somewhat strange, since that would mean that you normally carbonate your beers to levels far above what is generally considered normal. At such pressure you would open a PET bottle only to have your beer end up on the ceiling... :-) – Frank van Wensveen May 13 '22 at 13:27
Well I was specifically referring to the likely continued primary fermentation I expect the OP will experience in-bottle. Otherwise I completely agree with you. – Kingsley May 15 '22 at 21:48
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If you bottle too early (which in this case seems likely) your concern re. glass bottle bombs is entirely warranted. My point is, however, that bottling in PET is not the way to deal with this. – Frank van Wensveen May 17 '22 at 12:11

Bottling a Doom Bar clone at high SG

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