Missed OG. Add sugar?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Rehlgood

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2012
Messages
198
Reaction score
29
Location
Raleigh
Yesterday I brewed a Belgian triple with a target OG of 1.084. My efficiency and volume were a little of and I ended up with about 5 3/4 gallons of 1.075 wert. I also mashed a little higher than expected (152ish vs 150 for 75 minutes). My brewing program is telling me this will attenuate to 1.021. Should I add some sugar (sterilized) in a day or 2 to raise the OG and balance the bitterness? If I do is it best to use corn sugar or something else that will give me some residual sweetness?
 
dried/liquid malt extract would bring up the gravity and add residual sweetness.
 
Yesterday I brewed a Belgian triple with a target OG of 1.084. My efficiency and volume were a little of and I ended up with about 5 3/4 gallons of 1.075 wert. I also mashed a little higher than expected (152ish vs 150 for 75 minutes). My brewing program is telling me this will attenuate to 1.021. Should I add some sugar (sterilized) in a day or 2 to raise the OG and balance the bitterness? If I do is it best to use corn sugar or something else that will give me some residual sweetness?

Isn't there already sugar in the recipe? A Belgian Tripel should have quite a bit of sugar in it to begin with or it will never dry out to the correct level.

Typically, you would want to make up for lost gravity points in a mash by adding malt extract in order to keep the recipe's balance the same.

In a beer that has a percentage of sugar in it to begin with, remember that sugar always contributes a predictable amount of fermentable sugar. If you already have, say 15% simple sugar in a Tripel recipe and you undershoot your OG by 10 points, your percentage of sugar increases because only the malt portion of the recipe comes out lower than expected. Adding more sugar will make the percentage of your recipe that is simple sugars even higher.
 
Malt extract would probably be better if you want to keeps the sugar type proportions closer to your intended mix. You don't have to sterilize dry sugar, it pulls the water out of the nasties and kills most of them on it's own. Corn sugar dissolves easily, but you can use regular table sugar if you would like. Table sugar is 100% fermentable so it's a straight increase in alcohol content with no residual sweetness.
 
Yesterday I brewed a Belgian triple with a target OG of 1.084. My efficiency and volume were a little of and I ended up with about 5 3/4 gallons of 1.075 wert. I also mashed a little higher than expected (152ish vs 150 for 75 minutes). My brewing program is telling me this will attenuate to 1.021. Should I add some sugar (sterilized) in a day or 2 to raise the OG and balance the bitterness? If I do is it best to use corn sugar or something else that will give me some residual sweetness?

What's your recipe?

You just don't get the attenuation reported by brewing programs with large amounts of sugar. I use BrewTarget. Great program. Most of the belgian yeasts are listed as having something like 75% attenuation. I never get that. It's always way higher. Did a Duvel thing, came in at 90% apparent attenuation with 20% sucrose. Wyeast 3522 tripel was 12% sucrose, 86% attenuation.

I wouldn't mess with it. If you're a stickler for style, the tripel is greater than or equal to 1.075 OG. So you're fine. IBUS 20-40.

I'm cheap. I get the cheapest crap Aldi's sells for sugar. Which is plain white table sugar. Works great. I personally don't use dextrose, but a lot of people do. Generally, the best way to add fermentables to your beer is by throwing some boiled pilsen DME into the fermenter. Golden light DME works too.
 
Back
Top