Got a too-sweet beer on my hands... suggestions?
Hey everyone, some-time lurker, first time poster. Like many delurkers, I finally registered because I need some advice... and everyone here is so smart! So without further ado:
I brewed a monster of a trippel earlier this month - it was largely based upon the "Tripel Around The World" recipe in Sam Calagione's "Extreme Brewing." I made it a little bigger, though: the OG after the boil was 1.108. Fermentation was blow-off-tube-vigorous, thanks to the massive starter of Wyeast 3787 (Trappist High Gravity) I made.
The recipe calls for the addition of 1 lb. of brown sugar two days into the fermentation, which I followed. There's no way to be absolutely sure what this did to the overall gravity of the beer, but to the best of my calculations, it added approx .009. Fermentation continued, and I left it alone for some time. After a little over a week, it looked as if things had settled down, so I checked the gravity: 1.037. Not bad from such a high start, but still "too high" to be palatable. And there it stopped.
I read Wyeast's website about 3787, which indicated that this strain likes to continue to be fed sugar additions. So I added yet another pound of brown sugar (again, by my estimates, adding .009 to the gravity), and out of prudence, pitched an additional smackpack of 3787 I had lying around. Things got going again (though not as much as before), and I managed to get the beer down to 1.030. There it stayed.
If I'm right that the brown sugar additions added approx. .009 to the gravity of the beer, then the alcohol level is getting up there: 1.108 + .009 + .009 = 1.126. (1.126-1.030)*131 = 12.6% ABV.
I've sampled the beer: it smells and tastes like a tripel; in fact, it tastes quite like New Belgium's Trippel... aside from the fact that it is WAY too sweet. Cloyingly so - it has a wonderful exotic complexity, but definitely too sweet for more than a sip or two. Unfortunately, being brewed as a tripel, the hop bittering presence is relatively low, so the beer is unbalanced.
(as a side note, I should say the wort made was highly fermentable, so much of the residual sugars ought to be able to be fermented... by a yeast with a high enough alcohol tolerance).
So I thought I would add some champagne yeast to try and bring things down a bit more and dry it out a little; beer yeast would probably just pass out in this high alcohol environment. So I pitched a packet of rehydrated Lalvin-1118 in 24 hours ago...
... and nothing. 24 hours later, there has been no appreciable sign of fermentation and the gravity is unchanged.
So. Decision time! I see a few options, but only a couple I'd really want to try:
(1) condition and bottle it where it is. Ugh, I don't think so. I'd never drink it... too sweet by far.
(2) boil some hops in a small amount of water (or weak extract wort) for an hour and blend it with the trippel to try and up the bitterness to balance the beer out. This seems like the best option, BUT I'm afraid I'd take the beer too far in another direction -- I don't want some kind of american barleywine thing; I'd like to keep it reminiscent of a tripel if possible (fruity and floral).
(3) Try champagne yeast again, but pitch substantially more, on the theory that the yeast in one packet simply rehydrated was overwhelmed/shocked by the environment in the beer. Use multiple packets, and/or make a starter of champagne yeast. I know conventional wisdom is that one shouldn't make starters for dry yeast, but since the starter would be pitched into such a high alcohol environment (currently at least 10.2%, perhaps as high as 12.7%), I'd think any bacteria/wild yeasts in the packet would have a hard time taking over.
So FINALLY... I turn to you guys: would you choose one of the above options, and if so, which (and how would you go about it)? Is there another avenue to consider to help reduce the sweetness?
Cheers, and thanks in advance!
- EJ
(I'm choosing to not even THINK about carbonation at this point... this beer may be the one that tips the scales toward kegging for me, but I'll worry about that later...)
What temp are you fermenting at? how many days total in the primary? I used WLP400 the Belgian Wit yeast, and it took about 3 weeks to ferment down from 1.060. The first week, it dropped to 1.023, and stayed there, so I swirled it, brought it up to 75degrees from 65degrees, and would swirl it every day. Finally after 23 days it finished at 1.009. It took a while, but it came out great. Maybe this yeast needs a warmer ferment also?
Hi bruguru -
I definitely started the beer out a little on the low end of the temperature range for a Belgian... not intentionally, just the weather circumstances. Before I added the second addition of brown sugar and the extra Wyeaast, it was fermenting in the 67-68F range. Still, it worked pretty vigorously for a while; even using a blow-off tube, the beer wanted to erupt out of the fermenter in the early days. Anyway, after the first week, I moved it to a different room which helped it get a little closer to 70 or so, which is where it has been ever since. It's been about 3 weeks total now...
I haven't done much swirling (aside from the inevitable swirling from moving the fermentor from room to room at the one point). I'll try that for a few days and see if anything starts to happen...! Good idea.
The Champagne yeast is supposed to work across a broad range of temperatures (supposedly between 50-86 F!!!), so even if the 3787 can't handle things anymore, it ought to be able to run in these temps...
Cheers.
I've got a tripel doing the same thing to me right now. Mine has been on a cake of wy1388 for 6 weeks now, and has gotten 3 packets of 1118 champagne. It will not budge below 1.044, and i had a low mash temp and 5# of sugar. Mine is going to turn into a brett experiment, I am toying with which strain to go for, but I thinks the brux will win out, and 6 months from now I should have a nice sour tripel.
If I were you I would trybumping the heat up even more than 70, try 78-80, the esters will be a little higher but most of the ferment is done so fusels should not be an issue. lastly 3787 is a lagger and has tendencies to stall, I have done a BSGA with it and needed 6 weeks to finish out.
Engine Joe wrote:
Anyway, after the first week, I moved it to a different room which helped it get a little closer to 70 or so, which is where it has been ever since. It's been about 3 weeks total now...
I haven't done much swirling (aside from the inevitable swirling from moving the fermentor from room to room at the one point). I'll try that for a few days and see if anything starts to happen...! Good idea.
1. Congrats on your first post with such a common yet complicate subject sometimes.
2. 3 week so far, I'd let it go for another3-5weeks before I got concerned. Raise the temp to better than 70 if you can. Try a blanket and heating pad. Swirl that yeast up about twice a week and see what you get.
3. I wouldn't bother with champagne yeast. I read or heard something recently that champagne yeast really won't help out beer much. Mainly because it has been breed to ferment simple sugars. At this point most of your simple sugars are gone. The brewers yeast can still handle some of the other sugars, its just going to take some time. If that is true (which I find it reasonable) then the champagne yeast trick is largely myth.
I have one question for you... was this an all grain brew or extract? If its an extract brew then you might be done.
Hi brewchez & thirsty -
I'll see what I can do to kick the temp up a few more notches. This was the first brew I made after moving to a new house and I didn't really have a good sense yet of how warm various parts of the house would be in the winter... I was hoping I'd be able to just set the fermenter close to a vent, but looks like it's time for the heavy artillery!
This was an all-grain batch; which was part of the modification I made from the original recipe in the book (for a book called "Extreme Brewing" it's funny to note that all of the recipes are extract-and-steep plus one or two mini-mashers). I did a low temp mash for high fermentability... so there ought to still be some fermentable sugar in there somewhere.
Of course, if for some reason the beer is actually done, I still have a too-sweet-to-drink beer to contend with. But I'll give it another couple of weeks to try and let it drive itself down before revisiting that question.
Thirsty - that sounds like it will be great! I did something similar with a dubbel I made some time back; after the primary yeast was pretty much worn out, I ended up using White Labs Sour Mix I to kick in some lacto as well as the brett. I also tossed in some oak chips. The beer is still maturing, but it already tastes great.
If it stil lis too sweet after trying tose things you might want ot consider taking some of the finished uncarbonated beer, boiling it with some hops for 45 minuted and adding it back to the beer and let it sit for a couple weeks. You should get some bitterness to offset the sweetness that way.
DC
deafcone wrote:
If it stil lis too sweet after trying tose things you might want ot consider taking some of the finished uncarbonated beer, boiling it with some hops for 45 minuted and adding it back to the beer and let it sit for a couple weeks. You should get some bitterness to offset the sweetness that way.
DC, any guidelines on this? I don't think my usual hop utilization calculators would be accurate... I'm thinking of maybe taking a quart of the beer out to boil with some hops, but I'd guess this isn't the same as working with a quart of unfermented wort in terms of getting the bitterness out of the hops... also, I wonder about the net bittering effect when this new mini-batch is diluted back into the rest of the beer.
Anyone ever done this before?
On a side note, I've had the brew belt on the fermenter for the last 24 hours or so, bringing the temp up to approx 74-75F. I've rocked the fermenter twice to try and rouse the yeast as well. I'm going to let it go for a while and see what happens (nothing yet, though). I am getting a little leery of leaving the beer on the current yeast much longer - brew day was 3+ weeks ago now, and at some point I might start getting autolysis...
It shouyld be the same as using just water or similar as you mentioned the gravity reading is about 1.030 or somewhere in there. Not sure how much fermentables are left if any but I suggested using some of the fermented beer so as not to dilute the batch. Someone on the forum did boil hops and add it to the fermented beer to try to improve bitterness and they said it worked. I don't remember who it was but it should be in the archives. Maybe someone else remembers the post.
DC
I'm with Thirsty on this one. Adding some brett or other sour bugs might be able to bring it down lower. Can't say for sure, since those bugs are susceptible to alcohol and pH.
I added some brett brux, sour mix, and dregs from a couple of bottles of Orval to an 1100 gravity IIPA a friend brewed that wouldn't get below a 1030 gravity (he did a partial boil extract IIPA) and was really cloying and no carbonation. It definitely dropped the gravity and had enough left to carbonate. It's been aging in the bottles though and I haven't really tasted it, but it smelled and tasted incredible going into the bottles for corking.
One other thought on dropping the gravity - get yourself some Beano. Never tried it myself, but I hear you can use it to help break down those sugars, maybe giving the yeast the opportunity to munch on them before the alcohol goes to their heads.
DT