Final Gravity too high?

[wmelton]

Just finished bottlling a good tasting Amber Ale. However, I'm a little concerned over the FG readings. It came in at ~1.028 (OG was ~1.05). I waited 2.5 weeks for the fermentation to complete and it seemed too have stopped. Did I bottle too soon? What are the ramifications? I took the FG reading after adding the bottling sugar. Did that skew the results?

[paul84043]

Whew.....you had me scared for a second there...
Yes, taking your reading after adding priming sugar definitely skews your reading.
It's very hard to tell what it was before, did you take any readings before that?

Taking into account that you added your priming sugar, your reading is probably just fine.
I'd check them in a week though, and store them in a spot that if they burst, the beer won't leak all over something and ruin it.

You're probably just fine, but it never hurts to be careful.

[YamahaXS]

2.5 weeks should be good, unless your beer was in a cool/cold spot.

as a rule, if you are going to bottle without relying on level gravity readings then I think you ought to wait 3 to 3.5 weeks just to be sure, especially if you brew bigger beers.

[shughes600]

I'm kind of guessing here on the weight of that corn sugar. I assumed 8 oz. That would boost the gravity by .004 I think your gravity was likely real close to 1.025 That would be a bit high. Store those bottles where any mess from exploding will clean up easily. On your next batch figure out a way to take samples and read the gravity before bottling. A common rule of thumb is a steady reading for three days prior to bottling.