I am a homebrewer striving to be a nanobrewer in Margarita Island Venezuela. I do not have access to liquid yeast and can only use dry yeast (for now) and no ambitions of smuggling liquid yeast in the prison wallet to get it here hahaha Plus I can only bring brewing supplies little by little and I am literally brewing in one of the most difficult places to brew in the world because there are shortages of many basic goods. Thus any solution must begin with basic stuff you can buy at hardware store without resorting to just going to LHBS. Got to do most EVERYTHING from scratch...seriously, the gas pressure here sucks so I literally had to make a WW1 style flamethrower to get my 60lts to a boil. Thus any solution must come from the bare basics.
I am presently having problems with ATTENUATION in most all my beers now, except for my wheat beers. Robust Oatmeal Porter OG 1.071 SG 1.040 (brewed 11/24/14), Double IPA OG 1.075 SG 1.030 (brewed 12/2/14), ESB OG 1.062, 1.035 (brewed 12/5/14).
Of course, I could brew whimpy beers, but life begins at 1.070!!
So the long term solution I believe is to wash and repitch my own crappy dry yeast and hope that subsequent generations are better adapted. I built a large fermentation chamber and the temperature holds between 68-70 degrees, so temp is not as big of a problem. Sanitation could be an issue because I am stuck using crappy bleach till I get PBW on next pallet of grain.
The short term problem I need to solve is to fix these beers so I can drink them
I am brewing tomorrow a lower gravity IPA. I only have 20lts (5gallon) glass carboys as fermenters (until i get more franke kegs as fermenters) so very little headspace. I was thinking of using the blowoff from the beer I am brewing tomorrow directly into the IPA stuck at 1.030. It is the same safeale 05, similar grain bill and hops schedule. I dont know if this is the case, but can it be that excessive blowoff leads to lower attenuation.
But immediately, I would like to know if the kroisen from the blowoff (and stir the kroisen in with a sanitary stir stick) could take this IPA down to at least 1.025 or lower??? And will an IPA suck and taste more like a bitter at that gravity??
Secondly, for the robust porter, I was thinking of moving it to a secondary fermenter and the wash the yeast cake with sanitary water. Let it settle. Pour into mason jars. Let it settle. Then take mason jars and mix with sanitary low gravity wort to bring to high kroisen and then repitch yeast into robust porter.
I really appreciate all your input!!! Cheers- Frank