Added twice the recipe's candy sugar

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FlavorSeeker

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Tonight I pitched a propagated Wyeast 1214 (Belgian Abbey) into a double batch of Brewferm Abbey (total batch size 5 US gallons). A single recipe calls for 500g. I had my daughter run the kg to lb conversion, for which she gave me the correct weight. In my haste, I doubled this again and ended up using 2kg, vs the recipe's 1kg. This resulted in an OG of 1.080, which is what I'd expect for this recipe. Therefore, I'm wondering if I'm on a good path for the expected result. (The last time I made this kit, I made a single batch, 50g Belgian candy sugar and White Labs Belgian Abbey yeast, pitched from the slant and it turned out great at 7.67% ABV.)

I'd hate to go through the ingredients right now, but I do have two more kits I could mix and make ten gallons, if that's the consensus. Please respond ASAP, as I'll need jump on this right within the next few hours.

Thanks, in advance.
 
I do have a recipe (originally by Flyangler18) for a belgian golden strong ale, that asks for 3lbs for a 6 gallon batch, which would be even more than your 4.41 lbs for a 10 gallon batch. I beleive that the difference wil be that you will have to age your beer for a bit longer than you expected. The belgian golden strong is a 6 month aging beer.

I almost could put a ration of 2 months per lb of belgian sugar per 5 gallons of beer, putting your recipe at 4.5 months or so :)

i might go ahead and brew the other batch, keeping it original so that you will have what you expected in the expected time frame, and then the one you messed up will be ready a couple months after that :) It will probably be great, and worth the wait.
 
Ben,

Thanks for the quick response.

I'm guessing the extra time is to let it ferment out, not bottle conditioning? Yes; time is of most concern, as I am planning to give this batch away as Christmas presents. I recently came across 750ml Belgian beer bottles, with appropriate corks and wire cages. Everything was on track until my over-sweetening mishap tonight.

My issue with making another batch right now is that I don't have any more Wyeast 1214 for a second batch. While I would expect the supplied dry yeast may be fine (and now I have plenty of it), my plan was to harvest yeast from this batch for the next, so I pitched all I had. (I'm not within a three-hour drive to a HBS.)

What do you make out of the 1.080 OG? It seems odd that it isn't much higher, unless my estimation is off.
 
cutting that sugar in half only drops the og to 1.071, which can still give you a 7.5% alcohol beer vs a 8.5% beer, and the problem with fermenting sugar is that it ferments drier and in my opinion into a more noticeable hot ethanol quality that takes more time to fall out of the beer...


as far as not having more yeast, that really isn't true, as your first beer is full of yeast, you just need to get it into the second brew.

Is the first batch krausening? If so, go ahead and sterilize a turkey baster and pull half the krausen out, and add it to a sterile jar, and you will have a yeast batch for the next beer.

Go ahead and do a search for "top cropping" on here, and it is pretty easy to do(even though I have never had to do it myself).
 
Just let it go. It will ferment out quickly (unless the yeast stalls, which that yeast can do). The sugar will ferment out quicker than the malts.

It should be ready to drink by Christmas. The main part of aging is to mellow any hot alcohols. If you keep to reasonable ferment temps, that should not be much of a problem.

Don't bottle too quick. Once the fermentation is over, try and raise the temperature to finish off the sugars, and leave it on the yeast for a couple more weeks. Leaving it on the yeast will help mellow the fusel alcohols, as the yeast convert some of them to esters.
 
I would still brew a second batch witht the normal sugars added to be safe for gifts for christmas, as I just brewed a batch for a friend to try to get his father into brewing and it came out hot, and we have been waiting 3 weeks past the original deadline to let the alcohol age out in the bottle and in the fermenter(I bottled half to send to the father, and kept the other half in the primary). It is just a little embarrasing to give someone a beer, and tell them to wait a month :)
 
Well, I woke up to high krausen, about nine hours after pitching, so my first attempt at propagation is an obvious success, so I followed Ben's advice and top cropped via sanitized measuring cup, gathering almost the entire head. I added this to approximately a one liter starter wort and am hoping for positive results. I'm going to pitch this to a "correctly-sweetened" (SG: 1.070) batch add hope for the best.

Last night's mistake may turn into a Godsend, as I had no prior awareness of top cropping and had been concerned about harvesting yeast from the true of a high gravity beer in the first place.
 
Be very careful on temp, if that yeast gets hot it tastes like crap and is a banana bomb.
 
The package recommended 70-75F and I'm maintaining 71-72. Is that safe or should I drop it back to 70?

It is fermenting so ferociously that I had to replace my three-part airlock with a blowoff tube.
 
Are you measuring the air temperature or the beer temp... I good idea is to tape the thermometer or probe to the outside of the fermenter, and insulate that against the fermenter a little bit(not a lot because that could raise the temps of the beer. Usually the beer is 2-5 degrees hotter than the air temperature. If you can drop the air temp to 68, that would be best...
 
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