OG way too high thanks to my brilliance!

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SkylerChaBro

SkylerChaBro

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Here is my situation:

I made an extract version of a light wheat beer recipe I had found with good reviews. What I needed for the extract version was as follows.

3lb Bavarian Wheat DME
3.3lb Light LME
1.5lb Light DME (ended up using Pilz)

I decided to go ahead and use the entire bag of the pilz (3lb), and added 1lb Orange Blossom honey not really thinking about how the OG would be effected.

On top of that I magically neglected to take an OG reading at all! Super fun! I now have pro-mash and decided it would be a good idea to plug the recipe in and came up with an OG of 1.086!

1.086 seems kind of ridiculous, then again it was foolish for me to not think this out before saying hell with it.

What could the potential ramifications of having such a high OG be? Any possible solutions? Maybe to see if that could be accurate, take a nice sanitized reading now? (three days into fermentation @ 68-70f)

I know honey takes much, much longer to ferment so maybe the beer will be on the sweeter side, I wanted to rack it onto strawberries in secondary anyway. Maybe that would be a bad idea at this point. :ban:
 
Three days in will tell you very little about where it started, and with the honey it will be even more confusing.

I would guess this will be pretty sweet tasting when it is done. Whatever yeast you used are probably not going to be capable of getting this down below 1.2 maybe higher. You might not have enough hops to balance it.

All that said, you might end up with a perfectly good product. Take good notes on what you did just in case. Worst case scenerio, if it is bad, then you have a taste reference of what a high gravity beer tastes like without the right balance.
 
SkylerChaBro said:
Here is my situation:

I made an extract version of a light wheat beer recipe I had found with good reviews. What I needed for the extract version was as follows.

3lb Bavarian Wheat DME
3.3lb Light LME
1.5lb Light DME (ended up using Pilz)

I decided to go ahead and use the entire bag of the pilz (3lb), and added 1lb Orange Blossom honey not really thinking about how the OG would be effected.

On top of that I magically neglected to take an OG reading at all! Super fun! I now have pro-mash and decided it would be a good idea to plug the recipe in and came up with an OG of 1.86!

1.86 seems kind of ridiculous, then again it was foolish for me to not think this out before saying hell with it.

What could the potential ramifications of having such a high OG be? Any possible solutions? Maybe to see if that could be accurate, take a nice sanitized reading now? (three days into fermentation @ 68-70f)

I know honey takes much, much longer to ferment so maybe the beer will be on the sweeter side, I wanted to rack it onto strawberries in secondary anyway. Maybe that would be a bad idea at this point. :ban:
Click to expand...

I'm guessing the OG was 1.086 which is high for a light wheat beer. It might be ok, though. I'd be concerned about balance- I'm sure that the beer is underhopped for that OG. Still, the worst you'll get is a higher ABV slightly sweeter brew which might be just fine for a wheat beer.
 
Thanks for the reply's so far guys.

homebrewer_99 said:
What type and what AA% were your hops? They'll aid in determining how sweet the beer will end up along with the yeast used.
Click to expand...

I used .75oz Cascade 4.8 @ a 60min boil, topped with .25oz Tettnang during the last 25min. So in short I did not use that much as I did not want the beer to be that strong on the hops. I wanted to rack on top of strawberries (or similar) and make a fruit wheat.

With that, what about dilution? If I think the beer is too heavy I could rack part back into the cleaned primary when it's all done and figure out how much boiled and cooled watter I would need to dilute to a certain gravity, then bottle it. Has anyone done similar?

EDIT: FYI I used Safbrew wb-06, four days in and fermentation has been strong (bubble every 7-14 sec @ 69-70f)
 
If you diluted youd run the risk of diluting the flavors you do have and watering down an plesent flavors along with the bad flavors which would leave you with a bad flavor, weak beer... let it ferment out, and see what happends, then modify to taste... who knows you may get lucky and it will go just fine, you'll likely have rocket fule beer, but you maybe albe to smooth it out... also you may start a batch of the same beer with a little more hope flavor now, with the proper OG, or less, then blend the two batches to taste and end up with a oversized batch of good beer, rather then 5 gallons of unbalcened rocket fule

Cheers
 
BrewinJack said:
If you diluted youd run the risk of diluting the flavors you do have and watering down an plesent flavors along with the bad flavors which would leave you with a bad flavor, weak beer... let it ferment out, and see what happends, then modify to taste... who knows you may get lucky and it will go just fine, you'll likely have rocket fule beer, but you maybe albe to smooth it out... also you may start a batch of the same beer with a little more hope flavor now, with the proper OG, or less, then blend the two batches to taste and end up with a oversized batch of good beer, rather then 5 gallons of unbalcened rocket fule

Cheers
Click to expand...

Rocket fuel? As in it will taste like delicious, delicious fuel?

I'm not going to do one thing until I let it finish it's primary and have a sample at that stage for myself. I'll be lurking until that day!
 
SkylerChaBro said:
...I used .75oz Cascade 4.8 @ a 60min boil, topped with .25oz Tettnang during the last 25min. So in short I did not use that much as I did not want the beer to be that strong on the hops. I wanted to rack on top of strawberries (or similar) and make a fruit wheat.
Click to expand...

You used about 7.5 lbs of DME:

3 lb Bavarian Wheat DME
3.3lb Light LME (equal to 3.03 lbs DME)
1.5lb Light DME

The Cascade amount/AAs you used equals 3.6%. I'd say you underhopped a bit, but not enough to worry about. I usually use 3% for 6 lbs of DME for my Hefe Weizens and they are on the sweet side.

I think your brew will be sweet enough to add some fruit to and not have any worries. Just keep the fermeting temps low and you won't get any fusel (hot) alcohol flavor. ;)
 
homebrewer_99 said:
You used about 7.5 lbs of DME:

3 lb Bavarian Wheat DME
3.3lb Light LME (equal to 3.03 lbs DME)
1.5lb Light DME

The Cascade amount/AAs you used equals 3.6%. I'd say you underhopped a bit, but not enough to worry about. I usually use 3% for 6 lbs of DME for my Hefe Weizens and they are on the sweet side.

I think your brew will be sweet enough to add some fruit to and not have any worries. Just keep the fermeting temps low and you won't get any fusel (hot) alcohol flavor. ;)
Click to expand...

CORRECTION! The cascade I used was 6.3, I had my information wrong, sorry about that.

How low do you think I should keep the fermentation?

Right now it's around 69f, if i moved it to say the basement it would probably be closer to say 60-63f.

Also remember, I used the whole bag so it is actually around 9lbs of DME.
 
SkylerChaBro said:
Rocket fuel? As in it will taste like delicious, delicious fuel?

I'm not going to do one thing until I let it finish it's primary and have a sample at that stage for myself. I'll be lurking until that day!
Click to expand...


Thats one way of looking at it:mug:

cheers
 
SkylerChaBro said:
How low do you think I should keep the fermentation?

Right now it's around 69f, if i moved it to say the basement it would probably be closer to say 60-63f.

Also remember, I used the whole bag so it is actually 9lbs of DME.
Click to expand...
Nothing wrong with "69"...:D. The inner temps of the fermenter will be somewhat higher. Leave it where it is.

9 lbs is definitely underhopped. You could make a hop tea or find some liquid hop extract to add bitterness, but wait until it's done fermenting and add to taste.

Where are you in MI? I get to Detriot/Warren/Sterling Heights several times a year. This'll be my last year for traveling there since I'll be retiring next January.
 
I've never brewed anything that high of gravity, but if I did, I would strongly consider trading the standard airlock for a blow off tube... Am I wrong to suggest this or would the tube be warranted?
 
homebrewer_99 said:
Nothing wrong with "69"...:D. The inner temps of the fermenter will be somewhat higher. Leave it where it is.

9 lbs is definitely underhopped. You could make a hop tea or find some liquid hop extract to add bitterness, but wait until it's done fermenting and add to taste.

Where are you in MI? I get to Detriot/Warren/Sterling Heights several times a year. This'll be my last year for traveling there since I'll be retiring next January.
Click to expand...

Well as long as that fusil*sp* taste does not come around. Fermentation is still going decent at a bubble every 7-14 seconds. If the batch does not turn out maybe I'll have something similar to a malt liquor (ugh). Now having more info and also being able to utilize promash will help dramatically in future brews.

I'm in Livonia, so not that far off from the areas you visit. Detroit is about 15-20 min east of me. Warren isn't that far either, although SH is more around a 30min drive I believe.

Congrats on your retirement, brew the world.

chemist308 said:
I've never brewed anything that high of gravity, but if I did, I would strongly consider trading the standard airlock for a blow off tube... Am I wrong to suggest this or would the tube be warranted?
Click to expand...
I don't think you are wrong at all, in fact the first day of fermentation was somewhat turbulent, although not that bad. The air lock got blown off twice and after that it was fine. Loss was very minimal, not even enough to make it off the lid! Blow off wouldn't be a bad idea though no doubt, any higher temp and I could have had some real clean up to do.

Mark K.
 

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