Hot answers tagged high-gravity
10
With a beer that strong, you probably should have repitched at bottling. There are several factors that the yeast must fight in this situation, including:
high alcohol strength - almost 10% ABV
cool temperature - the bottom two degrees of the yeast's fermentation range
long settling time - six weeks
There's good news, though. That strain should be able ...
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First, make an appropriately sized starter! Pitching a regular old vial into something like a 1.090 beer is a good way to overstress the yeast and get lots of undesirable esters, and have a beer that didn't finish out completely. Jamil has a helpful writeup on pitching rates and a pitching rate calculator that will help you size a starter.
Second, pick a ...
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Pure sugar is the most fermentable substance, at 1.046 points per pound per gallon. With 12 pounds of sugar in 3 gallons, you'd expect a OG of 1.183. Honey has an estimated yield of 35 ppg, and correspondingly the gravity would be lower - 1.135.
There could be 3 possibilities for the observed high gravity
the stratification is causing the reading to be ...
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As alcohol levels rise in a beer, eventually you can taste it. There is just no way around that part. However as a brewer you do have control over some of the less desirable tasting higher order (molecularly complex) alcohols.
The best way to control the levels of these types of flavors is to pitch plenty of yeast, ferment on the cooler side (that also ...
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This is a perfectly fine technique if you don't want to do a double mash session to get it all grain. The only limitation with trying to go "imperial" using a large portion of extract (or doing it all extract if you aren't set up for all-grain brewing) is the fermentability of the extract.
Extract, by nature of how it is made, tends to have a limit to ...
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Nearly any yeast will ferment out a 12% ABV beer. The Ardennes yeast especially should have no trouble. I have never found it necessary to do incremental additions to the fermenter for a high OG beer. Just be certain that you pitch the right amount of healthy yeast, oxygenate/aerate well, and make a fermentable wort. That means a long, low temp mash, and ...
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Oxygenate
Pitch a proper amount of yeast
Keep it at a steady temperature. For Ardennes I'd recommend starting around 66-68 for at least two days then ramping up to 70-72 until fermentation is done.
Have up to 20% of your fermentables come from sugar, not malt. This is normal for Tripels.
Those are the main things. A good tripel recipe is designed to make ...
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How do you feel about sour beers? I was just reading on The Mad Fermentationist that sour beers often mask their alcohol content with their other pungent aromas and flavors. And since they attenuate more than a normal brew, you get more alcohol for the same starting gravity, so take that into account as well. A 1.080 sour that gets down to 1.005 should be ...
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You'd need to check the Mr Malty pitching calculator to be sure, but I think you are going way overboard with the starter. For a 1.085 Belgian ale that started off in a smack-pack, I'd make about a half gallon starter of 1.040 gravity and call it a day. I've made a similar Belgian in the past, and did a 1qt starter stepped up with another 2 quarts, and it ...
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"Primary" fermentation for a big beer like that could be as long as 3-4 weeks. I certainly wouldn't touch it for 3 weeks myself, except to check the gravity once a week. After that, a secondary is up to you. I would personally secondary that beer for a few weeks before bottling, but I think you can skip that step, assuming your beer is fully fermented out.
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I too am brewing a couple winter warmers right now (1.090) one a week old and one a day old. I always start my fermentation out a little cold (max 5 deg from suggested, 2 or 3 if i can help it) that way the yeast has a chance to get comfy and rev up. Both batches pitched at low 60's, and the other answer is very correct about fermentation raising the temp, ...
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What you are wanting to do is basically a parti-gyle. This is where you run off multiple beers from a single mash. There are many different ways to go about this but the most common is to run off your strong beer and then your secondary. You can also blend the two worts to reach differing target gravities or do a 1/3-2/3 runoff. Here is an article ...
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As long as you ensure your extract is reasonably fresh, you shouldn't be able to notice the LME in an imperial that's mostly grain. From personal experience, the high alcohol content and heavy hopping rates make it impossible to tell that LME was used. Additionally, stronger beers tend towards higher concentrations of esters, fusels, and other aromatics, ...
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I just take a look at what I've got in my inventory and wing it. I almost always cap the mash with some additional grain, usually crystal of some sort. I've found that second runnings beers can have a thin body and adding more crystal helps with that. In addition, you don't have to worry about conversion using crystal or other non diastatic malts. As to ...
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Not only is it not too cold, it is in fact, too warm and could possibly make crappy beer.
A 1.095 beer is going to ferment with a LOT of activity and heat. The real temp of that beer today or tomorrow is going to be close to 70-75F if the ambient temp is 65F. Anything over 70F and you've got a real danger of developing fusel alcohols that taste bad and do ...
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Over a week or two, the temperature swings wont make much difference since there is little flavor contribution from the fermentation that goes on in bottle conditioning - for a high gravity beer, the priming sugar represents only about 1% of fermentables.
It sounds like after a week, fermentation of the priming sugar is pretty much done - the remaining ...
2
Like so many things in beer, a multitude of factors could be at work.
Is this an all-grain or partial mash? It's possible that you ended up with a lot of unfermentable sugars and the yeast are just done. More yeast will have nothing to eat. In which case your beer is just done. 7.35% ABV and ~63% apparent attenuation. Not terrible.
If the yeast has ...
1
The stepwise additions you're making to keep the gravity lower is often done with high gravity brewing. It relieves the yeast from the osmotic stresses of the high gravity wort.
3 stages is probably overkill here. If you want to call the first stage of the brew a starter, that's fine, although you could start with the whole 5.5 gallons at 1.045 and that ...
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For a really big beer (and 1.096 is pretty big) you might consider making a full batch of 'little' beer as a starter (OG of 1.040-50). I would consider doing a smaller, mild-tasting session ale so as to not potentially contaminate the 'big' beer with residual flavors. After primary is finished, siphon off the beer and pitch your big beer wort directly on top ...
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It's hard to know when the yeast has hit high krausen, since the constant stirring prevents a krausen from forming, but with a starter, in many ways, you don't really need to know....
The idea behind pitching at high krausen is to pitch actively fermenting yeast. With good yeast stock, after about 18-24h your starter will be actively fermenting, and will ...
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Did you make a starter initially? If not, you seriously underpitched for a beer of that gravity. If you want to try adding more yeast, keep in mind that it takes a LOT of yeast to restart a stuck fermentation. 2-3 qt. of yeast slurry is what's usually needed. if you have a brewpub nearby where you can get some yeast, that would be your best bet. Or do ...
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By following these steps, you should be able to approach 20% ABV:
As Morgan said, make sure you use enough yeast!
Aerate the beer with pure oxygen at the start of each fermentation phase
Add sugars and yeast during secondary (and/or tertiary) fermentation
Use different yeasts for the different fermentation phases. Yeasts that have high alcohol tolerance ...
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The main difference is that your beer may have a tendency to be somewhat darker depending on the extract and the original grain bill. Make sure you're using fresh extract, especially if using LME since old extract can develop off flavors. Essentially you're just doing a partial mash - plenty of recipes out there that follow that. Beyond that, you'll just ...
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I opened a bottle after a 10 days at warmer temps and.... there are signs of carbonation!!! So, I guess I'll let it keep going and hope time and temp do the trick. Thanks for the help! Is there anything else I can do do ensure it continues? (I think I saw a post on here about stirring up the yeast by shaking (for lack of a better term) the bottles.
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