Expected final gravity

[jollos]

Hi, I have put the following brew on 2 months ago and it has been sitting on 1.02 for the last 20 days or so. Seems high, but as i am using lactose, it might be adding a bit to that number. Anyway... hoping that one of you calc wizards could tell me the approx expected final gravity of the recipe... i have also noted that my notes are poor and may be inaccurate for which i feel greatly embarrassed about...lol.

1.1 kg ginger, 1kg LME, 3 kg raw sugar, 1 think 1kg lactose, approx 25 litres water.The yeast was s-04 ale yeast.

I will note i am way down south, so it hasnt been exactly summery, but initial ferment was very robust. The room it it is is probably a consistent 15-17 over this period.

Anyway... if anyone could advise on what final gravity i might expect with that recipe. It does still taste sweet, but again, i do have the lactose in there. Thanks in advance

 

[MHB]

Just roughly the lactose (1kg in 25L) will give a FG of ~1.016 on its own, so we are only looking for 0.004 from the ginger and LME.
Best guess is that it’s finished

Agree if you give piss poor information you will get pretty crappy answers. Good idea to keep notes, volume, mass added, temperature and time all count
Another hint, when quoting SG use all three decimals i.e. 1.020 rather than 1.02, it may not matter in this case, but later if you are using point, the last two digits as a number i.e. 1.020 would be 20 points - might save confusion.
For this brew your OG should have been close to 1.074, if it’s now at 1.020 and you wanted to calculate your alcohol content, the quick way is change of gravity in points / 7.5
So (74-20)/7.5=7.2% (ABV).
If a brew hasn’t finished in 7 days you have either underpitched or are brewing too cold. if you leave beer on yeast for more than 14 days, you will get measurable harm to the beer. First problem that shows up is usually loss of head, followed by all the other typical problems caused by aging yeast.
Given that it’s nearly impossible to keep a head on ginger beer, doing anything that makes it worse is to be avoided.
Mark

 

[jollos]

Thanks for the excellent and considered info... ill probably bottle over the weekend. I do normally keep pretty good records, for some reason, i have been crap with this batch. Thanks for the beer specific info, i am more of a fruit wine maker, so have never had to worry about head.... not on beer anyway..i can't even drink beer actually, but, think i might be able to get a taste for it some time...i did for olives eventually.