Thin body in a Belgian Pale Ale using Wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes

This was my first attempt to make a session strength Belgian pale ale.

Grain bill for a 5.25 gal primary fermentation was:

Golden Promise pale malt 9 lb
White wheat malt 1.75 lb
Aromatic malt 1 lb
Biscuit malt 0.25 lb
Cara 20 0.5 lb
Acidulated malt 0.25 lb

Infusion mashed at 152 F in an insulated cooler, using 7/8 part RO water and 1/8 part carbon-filtered tap water (450 ppm carbonates, little sulfate). Included 1 tsp CaCl2 for the mash. Batch sparged at 160 F in two steps and combined the runoffs.

Added 1/8 tsp NaCl to enhance sweetness and brought to boil. Bittering hops (Kent Goldings, 1 oz) were boiled 1 h, and flavor hops (Saaz, 0.2 oz) were boiled 15 min. 24 IBU calculated using Brewer's Friend. Cooled to approx. 70 F. OG 1.054 with temperature correction.

Pitched a 1 qt overnight starter of Wyeast 3522 in DME. Good activity the next morning in my basement, which held a steady temperature of 68 F. On day 6, into secondary with a hop tea from 1 oz Saaz for aroma. Adjusted OG after this dilution was 1.050. 5 gal total.

After 10 days in secondary, got FG 1.006. The flavor was good, mild and fruity, but the beer seemed too dry for the style and- here's the problem- it came across as pretty watery. That surprised me, considering the hefty dose of aromatic malt I'd used.

The hop aroma was too low for my taste, and the beer was just about dry enough to be a Saison anyway, so I departed from my original plan and dry-hopped it with 1 oz Mt. Hood for a week.

Now I have a pretty good session-strength farmhouse type beer. Not exactly a Saison, of course. There's nothing really wrong with it except for that watery quality.

I suppose the obvious thing is to increase the mash temperature next time, but usually 152 F works fine for me, even for malty beers. If anyone has any tips to use with this yeast, I'd sure be glad to hear about it!

How much water was added to get from 1.054 to 1.050? 24 IBU is reasonable for a Belgian PA.

Approx. 1.5 qt of hop tea made in RO water.

It sounds like it's attenuated a bit further than that yeast normally does for me but give it time, the body and malt flavour will develop a lot over the course of a month.

I've done a few similar strength beers with that yeast and similar ingredients and noticed the same thing but they've both been good after a bit of storage.

Did you pour in the whole quart of starter beer too when pitching or just the cold crashed slurry?

I've used a lot of WY3522 for 1.070-1.080 OG Belgian styles (containing no simple sugars) and they typically end at 1.012-1.014, although one stalled at 1.020 with no budging. That's 82% attenuation, 10% higher than the 72-76% Wyeast lists. I do add a pound of Carapils though. I really like the flavor profile of the yeast and 65-68°F seems to be the sweet spot for those beers, raising it toward 75°F to finish off.

So, coming from 1.050 OG, 1.006 puts you at 88% attenuation, which is very high. It's not infected is it?
What kind of aromatic did you use? Maybe it's highly fermentable, not leaving much residual gravity.

Have you calibrated your hydrometer? thermometer? And double checked the actual mash temps? In my cooler mash tun I need to mash in 4 degrees higher than ANY calculator tells me to. Reason is, during mash-in while stirring for 3-5 minutes with the lid off I lose those 4 degrees. There is no calculator out there taking that initial loss into consideration. This has nothing to do with pre-heating the cooler, which I also do.

I also put a layer of aluminium foil on top of the wet mash and poke my thermometer through it in several places to check the temp right after mash in and then again after 5 minutes. The lid being slightly ajar, and work quickly. CDN-450. Thermapen would be a bit faster at 7x the price, maybe some day. If I'm not spot-on with my temps then, I need to get creative, and fast.

What you could do to make this batch a bit more appealing is brew another one but a lot stronger to compensate, and blend them. Boost those unfermentables. You can use the same yeast, siphon it slowly off the bottom by putting a clamp on exit tube. Another pair of hands comes in handy.

Aromatic malt will enhance the malty aroma of the beer, but not affect the body of the beer in any meaningful way.

Did you hold 152 for the whole hour? I am thinking that if the temp dropped a little, and you didn't mash out and sparged with 160 degree water that the wort was at below 152 for quite a while. How long did it take to get the wort to mash-out temperatures after the mash and sparge? I think the beta rest was lengthy as I'm assuming that the wort didn't get above 168 for quite a while and so that means greater fermentability and higher attenuation in the end.

My thermometer and hydrometer look to be reading correctly. I think Yooper probably has it right. I use a cylindrical insulated water cooler for the mash, which holds the temperature better and more uniformly than the ordinary picnic cooler I used to have. But the temperature does drop about 1-2 degrees over the hour, and I don't mash out. Batch sparging (as opposed to fly sparging) does bring the temperature up rapidly, so that's my "mash out." But I was using only 160 degree water to minimize any astringency problems (that's why I also add a little acidulated malt to the mash).

So maybe it's OK to go to 170 degrees for the batch sparge? And maybe mash at 156-158 degrees next time to compensate for the temperature drop?

And maybe in general I should make sure not to let the mash sit around too long before adding the hot sparge water? I generally assume the enzymes are dead after an hour, and sometimes get a little lazy about when I sparge, waiting as long as a couple of hours. For this thin-bodied beer, though, it was only one hour.

Point well taken about aromatic malt not increasing the body.

You don't mash at 156-158, you make up for heat loss while stirring the grains in. When that's done you should be at your target temp (152 or whatever). I know the round gott can be hard to stir and measure temps in, but you'll get the gist.

I didn't know you left the tun sit unsparged. Yet, that should not make that much difference, the gravity and percentage of total sugars in 2nd runnings is quite low. Mashing out is not mandatory for a good wort, most of us using cooler just can't do that easily. After mashing for an hour you could drain a gallon or so and bring it to boil quickly and use that for mashing out. Then sparge 2x at 170°F. Acidify that last sparge water a bit if needed.

Thanks, IslandLizard. I wasn't explaining it right, or thinking it through clearly. I pour the grain into water around 168-170 F, stir, and generally get 152-154 F, and then I adjust with hot or cold water as needed. After an hour or so, I take the first runoff and then I batch sparge once right away with 160 F water (or I could use 170 F water). I immediately run that liquid into the first runoff.

This is the partigyle method recommended by Denny Conn. Doing this instead of fly sparging, along with including a little acidulated malt in the mash, solved some occasional astringency problems I'd had in earlier beers.

So of course the two pooled gyles won't be hot enough to amount to a mash out. I'd have to take a bit out, boil it, and add it back as you said. But in fact the enzymes are probably long dead at this point. I might as well relax and add a little carapils to the grain bill next time. Or use hotter strike water and aim for a 156-158 F mash that gives more dextrins at the cost of less conversion.

What's odd is that the procedure I described is standard for me, and my other beers haven't had this problem with thin body.

I'm not 100% sure what caused the thin body beer, probably all of factors combined.

It is much easier to drop a degree in the cooler mash tun, just stir a minute or 2 more with the lid off, than adding heat. I was chasing my tail in the beginning as I always came up low, even by scooping out and heating up parts of the mash. Then it occurred to me that nothing calculates heat loss while stirring. So I found my "add 4°F" rule, for 6 gallon batches in that cooler. Even for larger grist amounts it still seems to work, as they need to be stirred longer.

Most conversion takes place within 10 minutes, that's why hitting the target temperature on the nose is pretty important, right after the stirring is done.

Enzymes stay mostly in the liquid phase, and denature progressively with higher temperatures. They all have their own ranges of activity, denaturation, and an optimum.

Mashing, draining (lautering), sparging and lautering twice with half the sparge volume each time is most common for batch sparge methods. Easy peasy, and very predictable. High efficiency and no need for complicated manifolds or filtering systems in the bottom of the tun. I use a cpvc manifold that fits the bottom exactly.

If you want to perform a true mash out, you need to bring the whole mash to 168 degrees to denature the enzymes thus locking in the conversion profile (see note)*

Either of these would work:

• add boiling water of the right volume to bring the whole mash to 168F, or
• heat the whole mash up. You can dump it all in a kettle, heat up to 168F, stir well, hold for 10-20 minutes, and dump back into the cooler if you want, or
• drain off a gallon of your first running and bring that to a boil quickly and dump back into the mash tun to raise the temps to 168F. You can add some plain boiling water to those 1st runnings if you need to or help along.

Then vorlauf and lauter your real first runnings and sparge once or twice.

*Note:
There is some current "research" (see below) claiming that a "mash-out" is not really necessary to lock in the profile.

An over-simplified thesis goes like this:
Yes, theoretically beta-amylase will keep chopping off pieces where it can, but that would have been done already exhaustingly during the hour long saccharification rest during the mash, given the speed these enzymes work at. Basically, there's nothing left for them to work on. Hence the profile is already locked in at the end of the mash. Mash-out not needed.

Make sure to read "How to Brew" by John Palmer, if you haven't yet. I've been brewing for almost 6 years and still learn from that book. Excellent reference!

I still believe that the wort spent a long time at sub-168 degree temperatures, and much of that time at sub-150 degree temperatures and that is the reason for the low FG.

I am not one who believes that mash out is strictly necessary for batch sparging, but I'd add the water at more like 190+ degrees, (to get the grainbed to 170) and immediately put the first runnings (and the second runnings immediately following) onto the heat to get ready for the boil. Not only would that be a mash-out, but it would also decrease the time getting the wort to a boil and that would seem to be advantageous as well.

Serum is right. The body of the beer is improved after several weeks in the bottle (I bottle everything).

I've also noticed over the years that head retention sometimes continues to improve in the bottle, long after carbonation is complete.

It would be interesting to know what causes these improvements.