Motorists all across the United States experienced getting stuck last winter. With record snowfall in the Northeast and any snowfall down south, drivers of cars and trucks found themselves in sticky situations. You try to avoid it in the first place, but when it happens—and it happens to all of us eventually—it pays to have the right equipment on hand to get out.
Beer can get stuck, too, and as with a snowbound automobile, the right tools can make all the difference.
A stuck fermentation is one that falls far short of reaching the expected final gravity, and as with many things brewing, the term is relative. A 1.050 pale ale that hits 1.012 instead of 1.010 probably suffers more from poor instrumentation calibration and repeatability issues than it does from stuck yeast. A 1.100 barleywine that stops at 1.045, though, still has a way to go and needs some help.