Fat Tire Clone Kit - Sweet?

What do I do if a batch turns out, in my opinion to be too sweet? It has been 7 weeks since brewday. I did 2 weeks in primary, and 4 in secondary, then kegged it and put it under pressure in the kegerator. My first impression is that it is quite sweet. The OG was .105 and the FG is .1011, so there is not much left to turn to alcohol in there. If I just let it sit 3 or 4 weeks will the sweetness diminish any more?

Thanks
Wan

It probably won't get any less sweet. A beer that's too sweet, but finished at 1.011 is more than likely underhopped. Beer is all about balance- the hops provide bitterness to balance the sweet malt. If the boil volume was lower than the recipe suggested, more hops could have been used to make up for it. This sounds like a recipe design problem, not a fermentation issue. What was the recipe?

here's the link to the kit list.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/PhatTyre.pdf

Did you control fermentation temp? You might be tasting fruity esters if it fermented too warm.

RedGlass said:

Did you control fermentation temp? You might be tasting fruity esters if it fermented too warm.

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I just kept the primary and the secondary in a room that is consistantly about 69 or 70 degrees, no higher. That should be fine for an ale right?

I would think so. Were you using the wyeast belgian described in the recipe? It might just be a recipe issue. Did you change the size of the boil at all?

MasterWan said:

I just kept the primary and the secondary in a room that is consistantly about 69 or 70 degrees, no higher. That should be fine for an ale right?

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Well, it's a bit too warm. Ideally, the fermentation temperature (the actual temperature of the beer that's fermenting) would be no higher than 70. If the room was 70, the beer could have easily been 5-10 degrees higher. I don't really think that's the problem here.

Did you follow the directions exactly? A 2.5 gallon boil, with only the 1 pound of extract, and then adding the rest of the extract with 15 minutes left? Even if you followed the instructions exactly, it looks like it should produce a fairly sweet finished beer. It could just be the recipe that you don't really care for.

I've used NB's recipe for phat tyre before, except I did all grain. It came out excellent not to sweet not to bitter.

If you don't like the final product then thats just one more reason to brew again.

MasterWan said:

I just kept the primary and the secondary in a room that is consistantly about 69 or 70 degrees, no higher. That should be fine for an ale right?

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you could easily add 5 degrees to that during the main fermentation period for the liquid temp. It is generating it's own heat inside of a nearly sealed environment. So I would say 74-75 degrees is a bit high depending on the yeast. I ferment most of my ales in the low 60s and that is the liquid temp.

"Did you follow the directions exactly? A 2.5 gallon boil, with only the 1 pound of extract, and then adding the rest of the extract with 15 minutes left? Even if you followed the instructions exactly, it looks like it should produce a fairly sweet finished beer. It could just be the recipe that you don't really care for."

I screwed up the quote there

answer:
It could perhaps just be the recipie.
I did a full boil as I usually do instead of doing 2.5 and adding more water to get to 5 gallons. I have been putting about 6 gallons to account for water loss and most of my stuff turns out good.

Does a full boil affect the finished product much vs. doing 2.5 gallons and adding water back?

YooperBrew said:

Well, it's a bit too warm. Ideally, the fermentation temperature (the actual temperature of the beer that's fermenting) would be no higher than 70. If the room was 70, the beer could have easily been 5-10 degrees higher. I don't really think that's the problem here.

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I agree. I was just basing my "that's probably okay" on the fact that the yeast in the recipe says its optimum range is up to 75.

MasterWan said:

I did a full boil as I usually do instead of doing 2.5 and adding more water to get to 5 gallons. I have been putting about 6 gallons to account for water loss and most of my stuff turns out good.

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Did you adjust hops for the full boil? If you reduced them to account for utilization then perhaps the balance was thrown off? Just a thought...

I guess i didnt realize I had to adjust the hops when doing a full boil. If you end up with 5 gallons it should be the same right?

MasterWan said:

I guess i didnt realize I had to adjust the hops when doing a full boil. If you end up with 5 gallons it should be the same right?

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Nope. Adding the extract late with the partial boil should simulate a full boil, but you'd have to run it through some software to see what the IBUs are. That could be the difference in the kit.

MasterWan said:

I guess i didnt realize I had to adjust the hops when doing a full boil. If you end up with 5 gallons it should be the same right?

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With more water, the hops have the ability to leach more alpha acids, making beer more bitter than expected. Which is the exact opposite of the problem.

I did this exact recipe from NB (extract) and also ended up with a sweet tasting beer, but it was because I didn't allow it to condition properly and I pitched my yeast into wort that was too hot. It ended up sort of apply and sweet. Difficult to drink.

businesstime said:

With more water, the hops have the ability to leach more alpha acids, making beer more bitter than expected. Which is the exact opposite of the problem.

I did this exact recipe from NB (extract) and also ended up with a sweet tasting beer, but it was because I didn't allow it to condition properly and I pitched my yeast into wort that was too hot. It ended up sort of apply and sweet. Difficult to drink.

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Hmmmm. This isn't really fruity, its just more sweet than I would have expected. I'm giving it until mid April and I think it may be less green then and hopefully more balanced. Thanks for the help everyone.

Update

Holy Crap.
I took my too sweet (in my opinion) fat tire off draft after having only a few glasses of it and stuck it in the cornor of the garage for another 3 weeks after starting this thread. I hooked it back up Sunday for a party we had and it was absolutly amazing! Unfortunatly, now 4 gallons of it are gone . Goes to show you to heed the wisdom of the experts on this board. Dont throw it out!

Seems the toasty nuttyness that I feel is a big part of Fat Tire really started to shine through with the additional aging. It really balanced out the sweetness and made one great beer. All in all I did 1 week in primary and 8 weeks in secondary as I recall.