Can Safale 05 take a KBS clone from 1.124 to 1.02 range? Already at 1.044

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bkpsych

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For my third batch I decided to work off of the KBS theme, and brew an oatmeal stout. My OG came in at 1.124, which I checked multiple times, and I pitched 2 sachets of (rehydrated) safale 05. I have read that safale 05 has a tolerance of 11%, but has been pushed a couple points higher per reports on this forum.

Five days into fermentation my gravity is at 1.044, which puts current abv at 10.5% (O-F x 1.31), near the yeast's tolerance. Most oatmeal stouts seem to shoot for ~1.02 - should I be thinking about something proactive (eg, more/different yeast) to avoid stalled fermentation while the consistency is a bit on the syrupy side? Is an FG this high OK, or should it creep even lower over the next week? Any advice from folks who have traveled these waters before would be very much appreciated.

Just tasted two sips of the sample, noticed aftertaste of espresso two minutes later, chocolate four minutes later. Can't wait to add oak and bourbon.

Details:
- steeped grain and 3.75 gallons water x 60 minutes @154 F
- boiled x 60 minutes adding 1 pint of espresso at the start, w/ malt extract (3.3# NW Amber, 12#NW gold)
- I sparged 2/3 of the grains, then added ~1 gallon of water to the pot, and steeped the remaining 1/3 of the grain, then let it boil down and added it to the wort rather than topping off with water.
- Aeration was vigorous.
- Yield was ~5.5 gallons, again, OG was 1.124

Next step:
ferment x 2 weeks, secondary x 2 weeks with 1oz oak chips. Oak infused bourbon (and straight bourbon) will be added to adjust taste. To be bottle conditioned for July 4th, enjoyed with cigar.
 
I've used Chico in the 13-15% range a few times, so I doubt you'll have a problem with alcohol. The gold and amber extracts may be a problem, though. You could have trouble getting to the ~85% ADF you're looking for. For now I'd just warm it up, even into the 70s, and maybe swirl a few times a day.
 
I don't really have the vocabulary for this, but am I basically agitating the extract so it doesn't congeal, and trying to unsettle my settled yeast?

I'll put my fermenter a bit closer to heat, and shake things around. Encouraging to hear you broke 13%.
 
I've used Chico in the 13-15% range a few times, so I doubt you'll have a problem with alcohol. The gold and amber extracts may be a problem, though. You could have trouble getting to the ~85% ADF you're looking for. For now I'd just warm it up, even into the 70s, and maybe swirl a few times a day.

+1 id say getting it to 1.020 is probably not gonna happen but than again who know stranger things have happened. also id give it as long as you can in primary to help the yeast clean up the mess they made scr**ing in the wort, something more like 4 wks, and also give it as long as you can in a bulk conditioning/brite tank (4wks-8wks) as it should only take 8 or so wks to carb up. be sure when you go to bottle, if you wait that long to do so which i definately would, that you scrape the bottom of the carboy with your racking cane to bring some of the yeast back up into suspension to do their nifty natural carbonation trick. good luck and let us know how it turns out, im popping mine (same style, diff recipe) on my birthday in may.
 
Was the NW Gold LME or DME?

If LME, you got 550 points from the LME (36 points x 15.3 lbs = 551 points: equivalent to 1.100 in 5.5 gallons), and the other 24 from specialty grains. You must have had somewhere between 6 and 8 lbs of steeping grains to get the additional 132 points to get you to 1.024. I suspect you used less and your gravity reading was a little off, but if you did use that much specialty grain, you will have lots of unfermentables, and probably not going to move any more no matter what yeast you use.

I assume it was LME, because if it was DME you would have gotten a 1.122 gravity from the extract and only 11 points total from specialty grains (probably about 0.5 lbs).

I think you are about done. Will not hurt to warm it up and see what happens.

Would be interested in knowing how much (and what) grain you used.
 
That yeast is capable of 15% alcohol, I've done it... the key is to have plenty of fermentables, I've found it frequently takes a high percentage of sugar to get a level of attenuation with the Chico strain that you will achive with all malt using an attenuative Belgian yeast.
 
Hello all,

First some more details on fermentables:
- Malt extract was liquid, (3.3# NW Amber, 12# NW Gold)
- 1.5# cara-Munich
- 1# of special B, roasted malt, chocolate malt, roasted barley, rolled oats (5# total)
- Again, instead of topping off with water, I essentially recycled the grain and mashed a second time. Espresso (1 pt) added at start of boil.

Gravity after 1 week in primary remains 1.044, unchanged since original post 2 days ago. Due to time constraints, I can only let this go in primary for another week, then secondary for two weeks with oak (thinking 1 oz.). I'll be compensating for the brief conditioning time with some Jim Beam Rye that is soaking in oak chips as we post, which I will use to titrate brew to taste. Looks like I'll either have a too sweet 10.5%, or through some miracle break 1.030 and 12%. Hopefully it will carbonate when primed.

I tasted the sample, and while it did seem a bit syrupy, it goes well with the alcohol content, which already seems to be mellowed a bit. I can imagine that with flavoring, carbonation, and aging this could still be a monster sipping beer. I'm wondering if I'm worrying too damned much about the numbers.

Calder, your calculations seem right in the ballpark - could you let me know if there is a resource where I can find the formulas you are working with?
 
Don't forget to account for the alcohol content of the bourbon you are adding when figuring final abv. If i'm remembering correctly, when i brewed my AG KBS clone I added 1 cup of bourbon and it added .5% ABV to a 5 gallon batch.
 
Would adjusting for bourbon ABV look like...

[(amount bourbon x abv) + (amount beer x abv)] / total volume

so with 10.5% FG (and 1 cup = 0.0625 gallons):

[(0.0625 G x 40%) + (5 G x 10.5%)] / 5.0625 = 10.86% abv

More importantly, how did a cup of bourbon make the beer taste? Any experience experimenting with different amounts?
 
Yeah, that is what the math looks like for that. Mine was 10.5% after it fermented out and i added a cup of 100 proof bourbon (so i ended up with 10.98something percent.

I've not done much experimenting with amounts, but you could always take a small sample after fermentation and keep adding bourbon till you're happy w/the flavor (assuming you can accurately measure small amounts). Then you just scale up the amount to 5 gallons and you're set.
 
Calder, your calculations seem right in the ballpark - could you let me know if there is a resource where I can find the formulas you are working with?

All LME is 36 points per lb. All DME is 46 points per lb.

So from 15.3 lbs of LME you got 551 points, or a gravity of 1.100 in 5.5 gallons.

The rest of the points 24 per gallon or 132 points came from the 6.5 lbs of speciality grains. That works out at 20 points per lb. I usually estimate about 18 points per lb for steeping, and 30 for mashing, so 20 is in the ball-park.

Unfortunately, a lot of the sugars from the speciality grains are unfermentable, so need to be taken out of the equation when you want to know what your 'real' apparent attenuation is. Probably 20 of the 24 gravity points from the speciality grains are unfermentable (I'm not really sure what the number is). Using this figure, you have actually fermented 80 points out of a possible 104 points of fermentable sugars (or about 80%). Based on these numbers, I think you are done, which I think is what I said in my previous post.

Next time, use less speciality grains, and sub in about 10% sugar to help lower the FG.
 
Been swirling, put the fermenter a few inches away from a heat source. The airlock started bubbling pretty regularly. Thanks for all the advice, stay posted for the FG.
 
Yeah unfermentable extract seems to have gotten you, I don't think this is a yeast problem. You actually achieved decent attenuation so I doubt it will taste like syrup. The coffee helps, too.

A method that Chris Colby uses to increase extract fermentability for big beers like this is to stir your extract into a few gallons of water, bring it up to 155*F or so, and add a few pounds of finely crushed 6-row. Turn off the heat, and let it mash for 60-90 minutes, then bring it back to 155*F and add the steeping grains for another 30 minutes. Then boil as usual. The enzymes in the 6-row and the long, low mash temp will break down the extract making it more fermentable.
 
Yeah unfermentable extract seems to have gotten you, I don't think this is a yeast problem. You actually achieved decent attenuation so I doubt it will taste like syrup. The coffee helps, too.

It's not the 'unfermentable extract that is the problem. He has 6.5 lbs of specialty grains. OK; 5.5 since 1 was oats which would need enzymes to produce fermentable sugars.

A method that Chris Colby uses to increase extract fermentability for big beers like this is to stir your extract into a few gallons of water, bring it up to 155*F or so, and add a few pounds of finely crushed 6-row. Turn off the heat, and let it mash for 60-90 minutes, then bring it back to 155*F and add the steeping grains for another 30 minutes. Then boil as usual. The enzymes in the 6-row and the long, low mash temp will break down the extract making it more fermentable.

Sounds like a lot of work. Why not just go to all-grain.
 
It's been so long since I used extract -- don't extract brewers usually overcome its lack of fermentability by adding ~5% simple sugars to every recipe to make up for the deficit?
 
Update:

Current gravity is 1.040, which has brought abv up to 11.03. Depending on how much bourbon I add, I might match KBS at 11.2%. The texture really isn't syrupy at all, but you can definitely feel a moderate amount of body beyond the average strong stout.

I am deciding whether to oak my beer in the primary, or rack to my spigoted bottling bucket, using it as a secondary. I am leaning towards keeping it in the primary until bottling in order to keep the beer as oxygen free as possible. This would be one month total from brewing to bottling. The other advantages of leaving things in the primary IMO would be that I would have some yeast to kick up and transfer to my bottling bucket, and that I would be messing around with my beer much less.

I could also add a small amount of oak now (~1 oz) and let it absorb over a longer time, rather than overdoing it with more oak and less time.

When bottling, the plan is to take my FG, add bourbon to taste, and then add corn sugar just prior to bottling.

Please let me know if this is a decent plan. I'm still learning on the fly here and you folks have been very helpful so far.
 
!5 lbs of LME and 6.5 lbs of gain. I'm new here and like the higher abv beers but this is more then the 9 lb extract kits I have started with. Seems like alot but if this turns out good I may have to try it.
 
The grain bill is above, process is below. I think that this beer is going to be pretty decent, but would cut down on LME next time.

Day 1: OG 1.124 - Pitched two sachets hydrated Safale US-05
Day 11: .75 oz dark oak chips added, presoaked in Jim Beam Rye
Day 16: .5 oz dark oak chips added, presoaked in Jim
Day 21: Pitched 1 packet of EC-1118 due to gravity of 1.044 (higher than last post)
Day 25: Bottled with 1 packet of EC-1118. Added the 1 cup of Jim that I had used to soak the oak chips in, which is pitch black and full o flavor. Final yield is about 4.5 gallons. Pouring the diluted yeast through a strainer into my toilet (pre-war pipes in apt.) to catch oak chips was a bad idea - next time I'm dumping my yeast in the street.

ABV = 11.03% before bourbon, 11.4% after

I'll start sampling in ~4 weeks
 
Not sure on similarities but recently I used a pack of Safale 04 that had been opened, half used and the rest taped up in a fridge for 2 months..... got 83% attenuation from it! Was mashing on the dry side though and OG was only in the 1.040 area iirc.
 
Update:

Carbonating in bottle at a slow and steady pace. Gravity from bottle is now 1.032, and the Rye is noticeable, but starting to settle in with chocolate and coffee notes. Really a challenging beer for people who like sipping at brown liquor. I've started another thread because I'm not sure what the 1.032 really means in the context of this beer. Brewing a (moderately stalled) Belgian now, but will be re-brewing something close to this beer with far less extract and a far lower OG next.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/l...oning-added-rye-kbs-clone-241750/#post2865491
 
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