Fermentation time for APA with 1.080 OG

Question

I brewed my first batch (APA) and while boiling I lost way too much water which resulted in higher OG. Expected was 1.050 but I got 1.080. I added Safale US-05 (1 pack) and left it to ferment at 20°C (68°F) for 17 days.

Being impatient, after 17 days of fermentation, I started cold crashing my beer without measuring my FG. It's now on 3°C (37°F) for 36 hours (it took me 12h to bring it down from 20°C to 3°C) and I plan to leave it like that for another 48h.

After that, I'll go and (try) to bottle it.

My question is, what can I expect? Do you think yeast managed to do it's job in those 17 days? What should I do if my FG is high? Recipe says it should be 1.010 but what would happen if it's a bit higher?

Sorry if there's too much questions.

Answer 1

The 17 days of fermentation is more than enough to finish fermentation, your 1.015 is a good FG. After fermentation (about 7 days more or less), the yeast will flocculate to the bottom.

You already know the answer to your question "What to expect?", it is way too strong of a beer, perhaps 8.5% to 9% of alcohol, instead of 5%.

As suggested by dmtaylor, if you loose too much water to evaporation, not ideal, but you can always add a little more. Next time, you can try to figure out if you can adjust your setup/process to have less evaporation. Maybe you boiled for too long? The kettle size/format might cause more evaporation. In any case, you can either start with more water to compensate your excess evaporation or add more at the end to obtain the exact quantity you need to ferment.