Saving a flop

When I first started homebrewing I took a lot of shortcuts. I ended up with some syrupy brews, meaning that I used too much LME for a 5 gallons batch and the yeast died from alcohol level tolerance before it coul digest all the LME. The beer was drinkable but really tasted a lot like the LME syrup. Today things are different but I have probably three batches that are going undrunk, passed by by much better beer. I'd like to not throw these away. Any thoughts on saving the batches? Right now two batches are in bottles, one overcarbed, one flat, and one batch is in a keg with about 12psi CO2. I was thinking I'd dump them one at a time into a 6 gallon carboy add water to dilute the Alcohol and add new yeast. I have no idea how much water to add, what the alcohol level currently is, but I do know that they each saw two cans of LME.

Thoughts?

get adventurous. add wine yeast, and see how it tastes. the wine yeast will ferment the sugar without adding any taste, really, but will add abv

I've been down the wine yeast road, even champagne yeast a few times, intentionally, making barleywine. Never did it on a stopped ferment. Would I just start the wine yeast and dump it in?

2 cans of LME is 6.6 lbs. this is not too much in 5 gallons to kill ale yeast from alcohol.
they are probably syrup like from too many unfermentable sugars and wine yeast won't help without simple sugar additions.

sugar or extra-light DME and new ale ale yeast would be best if your going to try to save it

DON'T USE WINE YEAST!

Wine yeast is a killer yeast and only ferments simple sugars. Once added, it is difficult to get an ale yeast working again. An ale yeast will ferment your beer further than any wine yeast.

2 cans of LME doesn't seem to be too much, unless they were 1 gallon batches.

If you have undrinkable beer in bottles, I would suggest you pour them (carefully) on to an existing yeast cake. Next time you bottle a beer, pour these beers onto the cake and see what happens.

amandabab said:

2 cans of LME is 6.6 lbs. this is not too much in 5 gallons to kill ale yeast from alcohol.
they are probably syrup like from too many unfermentable sugars and wine yeast won't help without simple sugar additions

Click to expand...

+1 yeah, that's pretty much what i was thinking!