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Got a too-sweet beer on my hands... suggestions?
Recently I read PH can affect fermentation in beer. You might want to g et some PH paper and see what PH the beer is at. It should be at about 5.5. Maybe the beano changed the ph enough restart some fermentation.
DC
bruguru wrote:
I've often wondered if you could put your carboy, or your fermentation bucket on a stir plate with the stirrer actually in the beer. This seems to me like it might work especially for belgians.
Has anyone tried this? I think I might on my next belgian
I have heard of blowing CO2 into the bottom of a conical fermentor before to rouse the yeast occasionally.
In order to do this on a stir plate you would need one with a much stronger magnet set up than the one you use for starters.
brewchez wrote:
Hell if you are bent on trying to get it to go lower just for shits and giggles now I'd suggest Beano...but I'd never suggest beano normally.
Why would you never suggest this normally? The article in byo seemed to suggest that it is a viable way to lower your fg and calorie count without affecting the flavor. Do you have a personal experience with beano that differs from their account? Just curious.
It seems according to the article that if one wanted to produce a style of beer with a lighter body and lower calorie count this could work. Although adjusting the grain bill beforehand would achieve the same end, the example in the article of splitting the batch might be a possible use for beano .
I'm not sure if I could bring myself to actually put beano in my beer (the above post being an exception). It just seems somewhat sacreligious.
Rph Brewer wrote:
brewchez wrote:
Hell if you are bent on trying to get it to go lower just for shits and giggles now I'd suggest Beano...but I'd never suggest beano normally.
Why would you never suggest this normally? The article in byo seemed to suggest that it is a viable way to lower your fg and calorie count without affecting the flavor.
The problem is there is no good way to control this. Beano will break down some of the complex sugars that are holding up your gravity into simpler ones so that your yeast can ferment them. Problem is how much beano do you add to get to your target FG. In most cases, you end up taking a 1.025 gravity beer down to 1.005 and its now too dry.
This reinforces my point that its just better to learn and rebrew in the future.
You can buy alpha amylase too rather than use beano.
All of these "fix" solutions (even when they appear in BYO) don't make better beer. The science of the beano trick is sound. But its application and functionality is difficult to control and predict; leading to a beer than can have new issues.
I am all for experimentation in brewing, its the only way to really become a better brewer. But experimentation and "fixing" a beer are very different things.
In my opinion, its just not really worth the time to try and fix a beer. I just learn from it, dump and rebrew it.
Don't dump it! I was faced with a similar problem recently with a Russian Imperial Stout. OG was around 1.099 and it finished at 1.037. The beer wasn't very drinkable by itself but when mixed with an American Wheat that I made it was somewhat passable. An even better option is to just save it for marinades and cooking. Overly sweet beers are perfect for cooking.
brewchez wrote:
In my opinion, its just not really worth the time to try and fix a beer. I just learn from it, dump and rebrew it.
Good point, except I'd change the dump to drink (if you can) 
andrew jensen wrote:
Don't dump it! I was faced with a similar problem recently with a Russian Imperial Stout. OG was around 1.099 and it finished at 1.037. The beer wasn't very drinkable by itself but when mixed with an American Wheat that I made it was somewhat passable. An even better option is to just save it for marinades and cooking. Overly sweet beers are perfect for cooking.
To each his own and I have no issues with people doing whatever they want to save thier investment.
But to my point still...
I wouldn't waste 5 gallons of a good wheat beer in order to blend it with 5 gallons of bad beer to drink 10 gallons of PASSABLE beer. I know you don't do the whole ten gallons...but be honest if you didn;t do the whole ten gallons eventually you dumped some of that RIS out. (just an example).
Furthermore... I have also cooked with some imperfect beers...but garbage in garbage out. And I certainly have no room in my brew space to save 5 gallons of marinade!
I am not busting chops, at least not intentionally.
If your interested in drinking beer for drinking beer sake thats great. For me I only brew beer to brew the best beer I can. When something goes wrong and I have a sweet one or overly dry one. I don't bother wasting my time. There is plenty of other beer to drink in the world. I learn from it, dump it and move on.
Ah Brewchez...you're right about the mixing. Unless you want to talk about Gueuze, but that's another topic altogether. However, sweet malty beers make fantastic marinades and are great for sauteeing. Usually I would cringe running a gallon of beer out of my tap to marinade a bird but not so with my RIS. Give me an overly sweet beer to cook with over a fantastic IPA or APA any day.
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