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Date: 17 Oct 2006 18:29:48
From: Brewing Abroad
Subject: Stupid compound errors! A little help, please...
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All:
I could use some opinions/help on this one. I brewed the Brown Ale
listed below about 10 days ago and it is WAY too sweet. I am fairly
certain I made two errors here- 1) too much CarMalt and 2) too high of
a mash temp, I didn't get the temp drop I expected at dough in. I am
serving outside the US and all my ingredients come slow boat from the
US via military mail, so I don't want to toss this out-I really
want to "save" it (not that no one will drink it as is, I just want
it less sweet).
I was trying to use up all of the ingredients I had on had and this
seemed like a good way to do so. My brewing/fermenting area is on the
cooler side so the Wyeast2112 really works well for me. Fermentation
was strong, but the beer is way to sweet- too many unfermentable
sugars, I imagine.
I am thinking about adding .75 gallons of very bitter wort to the
secondary, along the lines of: steep .25 pound each chocolate malt and
roast barley in the 1 gallon of water then boiling 1.5 pounds of amber
extract with an ounce of Cascade pellets in the liquor (this is what I
have to work with on hand). This should give me a wort of an OG of
1.088 and about 80 IBUs.
I figure this will give me 16 more IBUs total (more or less) and
hopefully also dry out the beer a little, along with some roasted
flavor from the barley.
Any and all opinions gladly welcomed.
5 lbs. Maris Otter Pale
1 lbs. English Brown Malt
1 lbs. Golden Naked Oats
.75 lbs. American Chocolate Malt
1 lbs. CaraMalt
1.5 lbs. Dry Light Extract
1 oz. Cascade (Whole, 5.6 %AA) boiled 60 min.
.5 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 8.50 %AA) boiled 20 min.
.5 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 8.50 %AA) boiled 1 min.
Yeast : WYeast 2112 California Lager
OG: 1.061
FG: 1.018 (at 6 days when racked to secondary)
Cheers,
Shane
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Date: 18 Oct 2006 10:31:57
From: Mark R
Subject: Re: Stupid compound errors! A little help, please...
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"Brewing Abroad" <shane.myers@gmail.com > wrote in message
news:1161134988.474127.94040@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
> All:
>
> I could use some opinions/help on this one.
>
>
> 5 lbs. Maris Otter Pale
> 1 lbs. English Brown Malt
> 1 lbs. Golden Naked Oats
> .75 lbs. American Chocolate Malt
> 1 lbs. CaraMalt
> 1.5 lbs. Dry Light Extract
> 1 oz. Cascade (Whole, 5.6 %AA) boiled 60 min.
> .5 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 8.50 %AA) boiled 20 min.
> .5 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 8.50 %AA) boiled 1 min.
> Yeast : WYeast 2112 California Lager
>
> OG: 1.061
> FG: 1.018 (at 6 days when racked to secondary)
That recipe and FG look about right for 6 days. It's too late now but I
would have used the Amarillo for the bitterness and the Cascade for the
final additions. I'd let it go two or three weeks in secondary before I did
anything else.
Mark R
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Date: 18 Oct 2006 07:43:47
From: MarkMc
Subject: Re: Stupid compound errors! A little help, please...
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is no good way to know exactly how much to use. Too little and it's
> almost as sweet as you started, and too much makes really bitter water
> with alcohol in it. Not sure you can call it beer at that point. ;)
No but you could call it Bud! Sorry, just had to be said! :)
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Date: 18 Oct 2006 06:58:37
From:
Subject: Re: Stupid compound errors! A little help, please...
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Brewing Abroad wrote:
> All:
>
> I am thinking about adding .75 gallons of very bitter wort to the
> secondary, along the lines of: steep .25 pound each chocolate malt and
> roast barley in the 1 gallon of water then boiling 1.5 pounds of amber
> extract with an ounce of Cascade pellets in the liquor (this is what I
> have to work with on hand). This should give me a wort of an OG of
> 1.088 and about 80 IBUs.
>
> I figure this will give me 16 more IBUs total (more or less) and
> hopefully also dry out the beer a little, along with some roasted
> flavor from the barley.
>
> Any and all opinions gladly welcomed.
>
>
> 5 lbs. Maris Otter Pale
> 1 lbs. English Brown Malt
> 1 lbs. Golden Naked Oats
> .75 lbs. American Chocolate Malt
> 1 lbs. CaraMalt
> 1.5 lbs. Dry Light Extract
> 1 oz. Cascade (Whole, 5.6 %AA) boiled 60 min.
> .5 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 8.50 %AA) boiled 20 min.
> .5 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 8.50 %AA) boiled 1 min.
> Yeast : WYeast 2112 California Lager
>
> OG: 1.061
> FG: 1.018 (at 6 days when racked to secondary)
Two things I can think of. One I would try, the other I would be
loathe to do, but might try if it came down to it.
The first is make a bitter wort like you describe, or a hop tea. The
low volume and high gravity you mention will really cut back on
utilization, so you won't get quite as much bitterness as if it was a
1.034 wort. You may want to either boil the hops in plain water (hop
tea) which makes it very bitter for the amount of hops you add, or
start with a half pound of extract for a low gravity wort, and then add
the rest of the rest of the extract near the end of the boil.
The second is to add a small amount of enzymes, like amalyse or
galactosidase (beano) to do to the complex sugars what the low mash
temp you were shooting for would have. The problem here is that there
is no good way to know exactly how much to use. Too little and it's
almost as sweet as you started, and too much makes really bitter water
with alcohol in it. Not sure you can call it beer at that point. ;)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Shane
Good luck,
Bryan
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Date: 18 Oct 2006 19:33:58
From: John 'Shaggy' Kolesar
Subject: Re: Stupid compound errors! A little help, please...
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On 17 2006 18:29:48 -0700, <shane.myers@gmail.com > wrote:
> All:
>
> I could use some opinions/help on this one. I brewed the Brown Ale
> listed below about 10 days ago and it is WAY too sweet. I am fairly
> certain I made two errors here- 1) too much CarMalt and 2) too high of
> a mash temp, I didn't get the temp drop I expected at dough in. I am
> serving outside the US and all my ingredients come slow boat from the
> US via military mail, so I don't want to toss this out-I really
> want to "save" it (not that no one will drink it as is, I just want
> it less sweet).
It sounds like the beer is still in the fermenter, rather than being "done"
and in the bottles/keg. I'd just be more patient and leave it alone. Based
on the gravities you gave you're at around 70% attenuation, so it's not
a fermentation health problem (stuck, etc). It sounds like you've got
decent activity from the yeast. It could be that there's still a little
bit left in it to ferment out though, especially since you say that you
tend to be on the cold side.
I'd just let it go for now and see what the gravity does in another week or
so. If it doesn't change at all and you're still getting the sweet
taste, then maybe it's a recipe issue.
A couple of people have suggested ways of addressing that, but IMO I'd
just drink it as-is. Anything you try to do now (hop tea, beano, etc) will
probably only make matters worse. The easiest/best thing to do would be to
get a hold of some isomerized hop extract and add some of that, but it's
probably going to be tough to get a hold of over there. You'd have to
special order it from the US which would take awhile.
If it doesn't fix itself in the fermenter, I'd just live with it and make
a note to either cut back on the Crystal and /or Brown malt, or up the hops
a bit next time.
John.
>
> I was trying to use up all of the ingredients I had on had and this
> seemed like a good way to do so. My brewing/fermenting area is on the
> cooler side so the Wyeast2112 really works well for me. Fermentation
> was strong, but the beer is way to sweet- too many unfermentable
> sugars, I imagine.
>
> I am thinking about adding .75 gallons of very bitter wort to the
> secondary, along the lines of: steep .25 pound each chocolate malt and
> roast barley in the 1 gallon of water then boiling 1.5 pounds of amber
> extract with an ounce of Cascade pellets in the liquor (this is what I
> have to work with on hand). This should give me a wort of an OG of
> 1.088 and about 80 IBUs.
>
> I figure this will give me 16 more IBUs total (more or less) and
> hopefully also dry out the beer a little, along with some roasted
> flavor from the barley.
>
> Any and all opinions gladly welcomed.
>
>
> 5 lbs. Maris Otter Pale
> 1 lbs. English Brown Malt
> 1 lbs. Golden Naked Oats
> .75 lbs. American Chocolate Malt
> 1 lbs. CaraMalt
> 1.5 lbs. Dry Light Extract
> 1 oz. Cascade (Whole, 5.6 %AA) boiled 60 min.
> .5 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 8.50 %AA) boiled 20 min.
> .5 oz. Amarillo (Whole, 8.50 %AA) boiled 1 min.
> Yeast : WYeast 2112 California Lager
>
> OG: 1.061
> FG: 1.018 (at 6 days when racked to secondary)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Shane
>
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