Not quite at FG with an extract batch after two and a half weeks... Safe to bottle?

Question

It's a simple US-05 extract batch. OG was 1.063 and I'm currently on 1.016 where projected FG was 1.012. Gravity has been stable for three days. It's also absolutely delicious so I'd gladly bottle it now, I'm just a bit concerned about the possibility of bottle bombs?

Over the past few days I've tried rousing the yeast by swirling a little and upping the temps to like 21c/70f, but it hasn't done anything to the gravity so it seems to have properly stopped...

The only other thing I can think of is the fact that I steeped 0.5kg of Crystal for like 20 minutes at a slightly higher temperature than is usual. It got up to like 90c/194f. Could this have caused production of unfermentable sugars which elevated the final FG?

Answer 1

0.004 difference is also 1 Blg difference, to say it in units I know. That's pretty big here. At the same time, it's also pretty possible your fermentation has finished.

If in doubt, I would try fast fermentation test. Take generous amount of baker's yeast, fresh. Like, 1/5 cup. Fill the rest of cup with your beer, stir, put in dry warm place and wait a day or two. Then decant it from yeast and see if gravity has changed. If yes, then your beer has stalled fermentation and you should try to restart it. If no, it is as fermented as it is going to be. Warning: only works reliable under about 7% ABV.

After the things you have tried, I would assume it is as finished as possible.

As for steeping, raising temperature should not change fermentability much. It's not mashing. Proportions of sugars are set in the malting house. Light crystal have pretty much of fermentables, dark crystal next to none. Only at short-time steep it matters, because it speeds up sugar extraction. Both fermentables and unfermentables.