Can I fix a beer I don't like?

I brewed a Belgian Golden Strong a few weeks back. It was pretty simple and I followed the instructions mostly. I substuted the candi sugar for table sugar to keep the cost of the kit down. The problem is is that I was pretty drunk when I was brewing it and I was adding the sugar from what I drunkenly thought was a five pound bag of sugar, but it turned out it was a ten pound bag of sugar. So I added a lot of sugar. The beer tastes very sweet as there is probably 3-5 pounds of sugar in it.

Is there anything I can do with it? Can I boil it again and add something to make it drinkable? My brother said I should put it back in the carboy and pitch some Champaign yeast. Can I make moonshine out of it? Help me out, I don't want to through it out.

Brew a second batch with no sugar and blend the two.

Thats a lot of sugar

You need to let the sugar ferment out. The champagne yeast might be the ticket, though if you can provide og that would help get an idea of what is needed to ferment it. Your finished beer will be thy opposite of sweet. Probably a good long time in the fermenter(s) and bottles could help.

Sugar won't finish sweet, it will finish dry. I doubt a beer with a SG 1.120-1.160 range is going to finish with beer yeast. That could reach 17+ percent if it ferments out fully, so wine or eau de vie yeast will be needed to finish it. Or you could blend with another batch.

If I was you I'd play it safe and brew a second batch without the sugar and blend them together and then check your og. Of its to low adjust accordingly. Hope this helps. Cheers 17

x2 on pitching another alcohol tolerant yeast strain. Depending on the gravity you might have a problem even with champagne yeast. Although it can technically get up to 18% abv, it gets kinda fussy when the abv gets over 15%. You might want to pitch some distillers yeast even. That stuff will leave the brew somewhat alcohol "hot", but it won't require any special care up to about 19% abv. It is listed as being tolerant to 23%, but I've never had a whole lot of luck pushing it over 20%. The "hot" alcohol flavor should age out in a couple months, more would be better.

Leadgolem said:

x2 on pitching another alcohol tolerant yeast strain. Depending on the gravity you might have a problem even with champagne yeast. Although it can technically get up to 18% abv, it gets kinda fussy when the abv gets over 15%. You might want to pitch some distillers yeast even. That stuff will leave the brew somewhat alcohol "hot", but it won't require any special care up to about 19% abv. It is listed as being tolerant to 23%, but I've never had a whole lot of luck pushing it over 20%. The "hot" alcohol flavor should age out in a couple months, more would be better.

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Yea some liquor turbo yeast will def tolerate the high alcohol and get it closer to fermenting out. I've used it before to and I also could never get past 20% either. Cheers

derbycitybrewer said:

Yea some liquor turbo yeast will def tolerate the high alcohol and get it closer to fermenting out. I've used it before to and I also could never get past 20% either. Cheers

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I've used that stuff before & no amount of blend could fix the taste after. it ruined me on the stuff.

Billy-Klubb said:

I've used that stuff before & no amount of blend could fix the taste after. it ruined me on the stuff.

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I use it to make a wash then add the flavors to it to make my own 20% whiskey or I make wine coolers for the wife. It's really good for it. Use the fining agents also. I recently used it in some hard cider bc I had it laying around and that was horrible. And from your comment it had to of been the yeast lol.

derbycitybrewer said:

I use it to make a wash then add the flavors to it to make my own 20% whiskey or I make wine coolers for the wife. It's really good for it. Use the fining agents also. I recently used it in some hard cider bc I had it laying around and that was horrible. And from your comment it had to of been the yeast lol.

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If you haven't gotten rid of it yet, hold on to that cider. It does always finish alcohol hot, but that does age out.

Leadgolem said:

If you haven't gotten rid of it yet, hold on to that cider. It does always finish alcohol hot, but that does age out.

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It's still aging. I've got a few family members that love it. So I didn't toss it. Cheers.

Thank you all for the responses. I got really busy at work and wasn't able to watch the thread. My og was 1.1 and fg 1.02 +/-. So is the general consensus to pitch a strong yeast and age it in a fermenter? I don't care for the idea of blending it as my brew time is limited and I would rather make a beer I like.

With an og of 1.1 assuming you finish at 1.0 you would have an abv of 13.3%. So, I'd pitch the champagne yeast for this one. You'll probably finish between 0.998 and 1.0 so your still within the good ranges for the champagne. With your ferment 80% complete is probably isn't crucial which one you use, but the champagne is pretty neutral flavor wise. Plus it isn't know for producing fusel alcohols. That means little to no additional aging time, other then a couple weeks to let the alcohol mellow a little since it came out with such a high abv. That's what I would do.

Asking for a consensus oh hbt is like asking for one in the senate.

Well I think that settels it then. I'll pitch some champagne yeast and see if it can make it a drinkable beer.

A nice Belgian Golden Strong yeast (White Labs WLP 570) is a high Alcohol tolerant yeast. I would use something like this to finish as 1.02 will obviously be a overly sweet beer.