12-12-12 Wee Heavy Recipe Formulation

i just spent a couple hours reading all about the 999 exchange, which lead me to this 12-12-12 thread. I will read the 49 pages tomorrow night, but can someone tell me is it too late a brew a Wee Heavy in time for the exchange? I have no idea how long it should age. Thanks!

LabRatBrewer said:

i just spent a couple hours reading all about the 999 exchange, which lead me to this 12-12-12 thread. I will read the 49 pages tomorrow night, but can someone tell me is it too late a brew a Wee Heavy in time for the exchange? I have no idea how long it should age. Thanks!

Click to expand...

I had the same question but I think if you can let it age 9 months or so it'll be fine...

I just checked mine with a refrac today and I'm down in the 1.030s. So I will let it go a couple more weeks to see if it drops any more. I had my temps too low I think when I started the beer which made the yeast crap out too early (ECY07). So I added some WLP099 to bring it down from what was about 1.050 at the time. That didn't do a whole lot after a month. Then I added a dash of amylase enzyme. It's been sitting at ambient temp in my closet and has dropped to the near 1.035 that I was hoping for. I'll let it go a few more weeks and I might just transfer it and force carb the bad boy. I'll see how it tastes. If it's good I'll bottle it because I don't want to tie up one of my 10 gal fermentors all year.

I read through (albeit quickly) this whole thread, and tried to search the thread. If this has been discussed please point me to the right page. My question is can this beer be done with BIAB? I was thinking at some point during the mash, I could drain off two gallons into a second kettle, and boil it down on the second burner. Would this be the same as "first runnings" boil down to achieve the carmalization? (I've only done BIAB AG).

Albert

It'd certainly be similar enough if you ask me.

LabRatBrewer said:

I read through (albeit quickly) this whole thread, and tried to search the thread. If this has been discussed please point me to the right page. My question is can this beer be done with BIAB? I was thinking at some point during the mash, I could drain off two gallons into a second kettle, and boil it down on the second burner. Would this be the same as "first runnings" boil down to achieve the carmalization? (I've only done BIAB AG).

Albert

Click to expand...

Thats how I did mine... I had to mash twice as this was a large amount of grain and didn't have room...hit my numbers well.

Any thoughts on best temperature to bulk age this? My basement sits around 60 all winter long - ok or should I Keg it up and let it sit at 45 degrees instead?

And as a secondary question - if I want to oak - should I leave it at 60 for the oaking period and then cool it down?

I searched and couldn't get the right combo of search terms to learn this on the forum. I'd welcome some reference reading on the topic if anyone can refer me.

Thanks.

LabRatBrewer said:

I read through (albeit quickly) this whole thread, and tried to search the thread. If this has been discussed please point me to the right page. My question is can this beer be done with BIAB? I was thinking at some point during the mash, I could drain off two gallons into a second kettle, and boil it down on the second burner. Would this be the same as "first runnings" boil down to achieve the carmalization? (I've only done BIAB AG).

Albert

Click to expand...

How large of a Grain load can you handle? This is 20 plus pounds all grain so you'd want as much as possible in your BIAB and then make sure to use a Marris Otter Malt Extract (do they make Golden Promise extract?) for the rest of your gravity. Frankly I think if you max out your BIAB and then finish with MO extract you'll be fine. Normally I'd say hold the bulk of your extract till the end of the boil - but I wonder if it wouldn't be better to let them go a whole 90 or 60 mins and really kick up the Melanoidens????

Just transfered the Wee heavy to a secondary. The gravity went from 1.100 (Jan 16th) to 1.023 (Feb 12th)= 10.3% abv- according to beersmith, in just under a month! I'm excited to see if it drops any more points. If not- I think I'll be happy because the hydrometer sample tasted great.

I'm still deciding on oaking or not, I have toasted and untoasted oak that I can add. Any thoughts?

toastermm said:

Just transfered the Wee heavy to a secondary. The gravity went from 1.100 (Jan 16th) to 1.023 (Feb 12th)= 10.3% abv- according to beersmith, in just under a month! I'm excited to see if it drops any more points. If not- I think I'll be happy because the hydrometer sample tasted great.

I'm still deciding on oaking or not, I have toasted and untoasted oak that I can add. Any thoughts?

Click to expand...

I have mine relaxing in my oak barrel, I drew off a pipette to try, the beer is fantastic with the hint of oak so far, in a couple months this one is going to hit its stride I think.

I say oak it, or oak part of it at least. I prefer the boldness of toasted oak myself but that choice is ultimately up to you.

I might try tossing some yeast at high krausen into mine. I want to see if I can shave a few more gravity points off. I just pulled a real gravity sample and checked it with my new low range hydrometer. It's sitting at 1.037 but seems to be slowly fermenting. I checked it visually for brett which I think I would have had some sort of pellicle. No pellicle to speak of, so I think it just had a little bit of difficulty. If it dropped just a bit more I think it'd be perfect. The flavor is nice now, and slight carbonation would help it along but there's still a slightly too sweet edge. The color is a wonderful ruby red/brown. I will figure something out soon since it seems mine is WAY sweet compared to everyone else's. You guys are finishing at 1.020s and I'm just past 1.040s.

Smokinghole I feel your pain! Mine has come to a halt at 1.044 from and OG of 1.114. Its right at 9% ABV but the taste is just a little to sweet. Im about to keg a pale and will prob just rack onto the yeast cake to see if I can get down to the mid 30's.

Did all you guys getting the high FG use the yeast from that small company?

Just two of us I thinks. I was super agressive with my boil and I think mashed higher than I should have. I ended up mashing at like 155 insteaad of the 150ish that I planned.

Huh... Yeah I was afraid of that and mashed at 147. After adding the sugar when it stalled at 1.030 it dropped down to 1.022.

Did the sugar alter your flavor bottlebomber?

BenS said:

Did the sugar alter your flavor bottlebomber?

Click to expand...

It became slightly more alcoholic tasting, and less sweet. I only did 8 ounces of brown sugar though, and it was a little over 6 gallons. The beer needs the year for sure, it hit 11% abv. It's going to be a sipper. I'm really excited to see so many people participating in this.

I might pull a sample of my batch next Saturday, while I'm brewing my old ale. This will be about a month of aging on oak cubes (3oz). So it could be rather interesting.

bottlebomber said:

Did all you guys getting the high FG use the yeast from that small company?

Click to expand...

I used ECY007 from East Coast Yeasts and fermentation pretty much stopped at 1.032, but I mashed at 156, boiled 2 gallons of my first runnings to a softball stage and then boiled the whole thing for 3 hours. I think I've just got loads of unfermentables in there.

It probably would be interesting to try it again with a slightly less aggressive carmelization and boil - or to do the same aggressive process and try the 1728 to see if it's the yeast or the process that is getting us these high FG values.

I'm not really concerned - this is supposed to be a fairly malty style, and I think it'll age out to something interesting.

The other interesting thing is that those of us that have high FG have essentially a very traditional example before the yeast would attenuate to the point they do now. If you go back through the thread I posted up a chart of terminal gravities vs IBUs back in time. I have isomerized hop extract at my house and depending on how it tastes I might bottle one or add just a touch of it to a glass and see how it tastes.

I moved this into my keg that I use for bottling. I think after I bottle up my dark strong in a few weeks. I'll transfer 3 gal worth of this wee heavy to oak it and add some brett c as an experiment. I like the flavor but mine is just too sweet. I'm actually thinking about adding brett C to the entire beer and just not participating in the swap. That is unless someone wants to try a brett wee heavy. However I feel that would put me out of the profile for trading. I'm almost certain it won't take the beer too far since the Old Ale with the 9097 blend only went to 1.018 for me. This beer is considerably sweeter after the primary ferment than the old ale was.

I figure based on an old post from The Mad Fermentationist I should be okay. I figure 2-3 months should attenuate the beer a bit further and leave the requisite body and sweetness.

I will consider rebrewing the original recipe and mashing much lower than I had originally mashed.

Smokinghole - where is your gravity now? I'd be interested in how far the Brett can pull this down.

I racked mine to a keg on 1.5 oz of Hungarian Med Toast Oak cubes this weekend so we'll see where it goes. My wife has been drinking up the gravity samples as soon as I'm done measuring - so it must not be too bad!

I had it written down on my beersmith at I think 1.036. Then my hard drive crashed and I am left with my backed up file from when my gravity was still at 1.065. I'm in the upper 30s.

Either way I think the Brett C would take it at least 8 if not 14 points based on my experience brewing that Old Ale using a similar process. My mash temp was not far off, but the gravity for this was much higher, and I was more aggressive on the boil down syrup, and more aggressive on the boil as well. I think that caused a lot of caramelization of the malt sugars which are not fermentable by typical brewers yeast. So I think adding a little brett C will bring it down a bit and make for an interesting beer.

I may try and pick up the brett on wednesday.

I'm down for the Brett

smokinghole, I thought you had decided that the very slow and incomplete ferment was due to the extremely low fermentation temperature you attempted to use? Are you now saying that it was due to a high mash temp and an "aggressive" boil-down? I think you probably have more fermentable sugars left in there than you may imagine. Just keep that in mind, because I think the brett will drop the gravity a bit more than estimated, and will probably continue once bottled as well, if not given sufficient time.

I thought that ferm temp was the case as fermentation picked back up when I raised the temp. Then it stopped. Then I added some WLP099 then it stopped and I left it alone for a long time. I checked the gravity at less than 1.040 but more than 1.035 I forget exactly as I lost the data and didn't have it physically written down. I may leave it be, I may add brett.

If WLP099 didn't drop it down into the 20s it has to be an issue of fermentables. I was playing lazy when I did the 099 though. I might just build up a starter of 099 and give it a good thick decanted slurry. If that doesn't work I'll let it sit a while and decide whether or not to get brett. I'm leaning towards brett though. It's at like 68% attenuation which is low for the primary strain and really low for 099 at this gravity. It's not an entirely unrealistic attenuation though.

What are you all thinking on carbonation level for your beers? I found a chart that gave the range to be 1.3 to 2.3, that is a big range to choose from.

azscoob said:

What are you all thinking on carbonation level for your beers? I found a chart that gave the range to be 1.3 to 2.3, that is a big range to choose from.

Click to expand...

I think ill probably shoot for 2 to 2.3 ....

acuenca said:

I think ill probably shoot for 2 to 2.3 ....

Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing, higher carb level to offset the sweeter FG.

azscoob said:

I was thinking the same thing, higher carb level to offset the sweeter FG.

Click to expand...

Exactly...i think a nice carb level will do the sweetness and high abv just right.

Took a hydrometer sample today, and sampled it as well. It sat for about 3 months in the primary (take that, naysayers).

FG came in at 1.024, down from it's initial 1.108 - 76% apparent attenuation, 62% real. Wyeast says 69-73% for 1728, so I think it's pretty good. Oh yeah, ABV is at 11.2%.

The flavor profile is giant malt flavor, smoky overtones, with a massive alcohol burn. Delicious stuff, although I think even 12 oz. might be a bit much, it's so rich. This beer definitely needs to sit for a long time. I'm going to rack it into a smaller secondary to minimize O2, and to avoid tempting the autolyzing gods any further.

Also of note, BeerSmith put the estimated FG at 1.023, so it did just fine.

Stephonovich said:

Took a hydrometer sample today, and sampled it as well. It sat for about 3 months in the primary (take that, naysayers).

FG came in at 1.024, down from it's initial 1.108 - 76% apparent attenuation, 62% real. Wyeast says 69-73% for 1728, so I think it's pretty good. Oh yeah, ABV is at 11.2%.

The flavor profile is giant malt flavor, smoky overtones, with a massive alcohol burn. Delicious stuff, although I think even 12 oz. might be a bit much, it's so rich. This beer definitely needs to sit for a long time. I'm going to rack it into a smaller secondary to minimize O2, and to avoid tempting the autolyzing gods any further.

Also of note, BeerSmith put the estimated FG at 1.023, so it did just fine.

Click to expand...

What recipe did you use? Your specs are basically identical to mine. I haven't tried mine in a few months. I've decided not to oak. I'll probably bottle it in 2 or 3 months. My alcohol wasn't really hot, more kind of vinous like a wine. Same smoky quality you're describing

bottlebomber said:

What recipe did you use? Your specs are basically identical to mine. I haven't tried mine in a few months. I've decided not to oak. I'll probably bottle it in 2 or 3 months. My alcohol wasn't really hot, more kind of vinous like a wine. Same smoky quality you're describing

Click to expand...

I went with...

20.5# MO
4 oz. RB
1.5 oz. EKG @ 120 min
1.5 oz. EKG @ 5 min
1728, 4L starter
Salts to adjust water to Edinburgh profile

I drew off 2 gallons to reduce, but didn't reduce enough to get it down to a syrup.

If I did it over again, I'd give myself more time to make sure the runnings had reduced, and also maybe play with hop additions. I know hops aren't supposed to be much of a player in scotch ale, but I feel like it could be a little more balanced. I don't normally make beer to meet guidelines, I make it to taste like I want. The other part of that balance issue is the hop flavors are naturally going to dissipate with time.

I took mine and transferred it out of my bottling keg back to a fermentor. I added two thick slurries of WLP099 to get it lower than 1.035 and it seems to be fermenting. I have recently discovered a pedio issue in my dubbel so I hope I didn't somehow contaminate the wee heavy. If I did I'll have one hell of a oudbruin. Luckily the other beers in fermentors are funky or sour to begin with. I need to grab some wild yeast and bacteria plates to check the beers.

I don't know how but I came in at 1.014 after 3 months of bulk aging... I think I'm going to bottle and store this one away for aWHILE... nice malty back bone but the EtOH is pretty apparent... I've never had a wee heavy... Does that fade with time to a smoother smokier malt bomb? Used 1728 by the way

acuenca said:

I don't know how but I came in at 1.014 after 3 months of bulk aging... I think I'm going to bottle and store this one away for aWHILE... nice malty back bone but the EtOH is pretty apparent... I've never had a wee heavy... Does that fade with time to a smoother smokier malt bomb? Used 1728 by the way

Click to expand...

Wow that is low. It will definitely fade but it will probably take most of the year to be good and 2 years to be at its peak.

azscoob said:

What are you all thinking on carbonation level for your beers? I found a chart that gave the range to be 1.3 to 2.3, that is a big range to choose from.

Click to expand...

I once carbed a wee heavy on the lower end of the range and it just didn't taste right to me and it took a really long time to carb up completely. I'll carb this one at 2.3.

Since I'll be kegging mine, I'll aim for about the middle of the range to start and then adjust (up or down) until I hit the sweet spot... I might need to install another gas line into the brew fridge to supply that keg...

I just racked mine into a five gallon oak barrel yesterday. It's five months old and sitting at 1.028 w/ 11.9% ABV. Surprisingly, not a lot of alcohol burn, but perhaps a bit over-sweet for my tastes. I'm hoping the oak and the booze from the barrel will help balance that a bit.

Btw - I'd love to swap a bottle of mine for one fermented with Brett. That sounds awesome.

I did not add brett yet. I might reserve a gallon jug and do it anyhow.