Brewed an Oatmeal Stout and the gravity did not drop as much as predicted, should I re-pitch or add yeast nutrients/energizer?

Question

I just brewed an oatmeal stout see recipe details here and I have a question about missing Orignal and/or Final gravities.

The OG was supposed to be 1.061 and the FG 1.016. I brewed and got an OG or 1.063 and I racked to my carboy last night and the specific gravity was 1.022. I'm concerned that the gravity wont drop any more while in the carboy, will it? Is there anything I can do to get it to further come down to the expected range (1.016 -1.018 - corrected for my overage on the OG)?

Should I be adding a yeast nutrient or energizer to the carboy in hopes of getting the yeast going again? If so what do you recommend?

Or should I consider re-pitching with more yeast, my fear here is that I only want it to drop a tiny bit as I'm not too far off.

Or should I just leave it alone and let it be for 2-3 weeks in the carboy and not overthink it?

Here are some notes about the brewing and transfer of the batch on my notebook.

Thanks, ~ Tom

Answer 1

I would not mess around with it. Looking at the recipe I don't think you would expect to much more of a gravity change. Normally I advocate leaving any beer in primary for 14 days. And then a beer with this starting gravity would defenitaly be fine for 14 days.

Your recipe has a fair amount of darker specialty grains in it and that will contribute to the 1.022 gravity too.

Just leave it alone for another 2 weeks and I think you are going to be fine.

Answer 2

I agree with the "leave it alone" advice. Between the extract and the dark grains, you had a fair amount of unfermentables in there which is likely what's responsible. BTW, I see you pitched at 75F. Your beer will probably turn out much better of you'd get the temp down another 10F before pitching.

Answer 3

There are many different factors that can ultimately affect the final gravity. They include yeast health, yeast pitching rate, fermentation temperature, amount of oxygen present at pitching, mash temperature, amount of specialty grains, and fluctuations in fermentation temperature. It is obviously important to monitor all these aspects of the fermentation process and over time and repeated brewing of a recipe you can better predict the finishing gravity. Don't focus so much on the actual number but see how it tastes to determine if the beer is good or not.

In this case I would leave it alone and take detailed notes on fermentation so you can adjust your process next time if the beer is under attenuated.