What went wrong?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

brackbrew

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 10, 2005
Messages
361
Reaction score
2
Location
Lancaster, PA
My last brew was made using a recipe I adapted form "The Homebrewer's Recipe Guide:"

Crimson and Clover Ale

6lbs light dried malt extract
6lbs clover honey
1/2 lb crystal malt (40 Lovibond)
2 oz. roast barley
1.5 oz Saaz hops (bittering)
1/2 oz Fuggles hops (aroma)
1tsp Irish Moss
1 package Irish Ale Yeast (White Labs #WLP004)

In adapting, all I did was substitute orange blossom honey for the clover honey, having read somewhere that clover honey can often lend a grassy taste to brews. The brew turned out to be a disaster, wildly sweet and inconsistent. The bottle conditioning took longer than expected--some of the bottles even burst approximately 1-2 months after bottling. A friend and fellow brewer seems to think fermentation wasn't complete. Unfortunately I don't know what happened to my gravity readings, because I was stupid and forgot to write them down in my log. Aside from my own stupidity, or an incomplete fermentation, does anybody see any glaring issues with the recipe? Would the substitution of different honey have caused the overwhelming sweetness? The same friend who offered the suggestion of incomplete fermentation also thought the bittering profile of the beer seemed insignificant considering the amount of "sugar" in the recipe. Any thoughts would be appreciated! Thanks for your help!
 
Approximately how long did you allow the frementation to run? High honey concentrations result in ferments that can run a year or more. The Oregon Brew Crew did a fermentation conparison with mead. The initial ferment took 8 months (1.110 to 1.034), another three months to get to 1.002 for the sweet mead yeast. In the same time, the batch fermented with 1056 was still at 1.016 and continued fermenting after bottling.

Brackets ferment about the same way as meads.
 
I let it sit in the primary fermenter for about 10 days, and racked to the secondary for another two weeks. The recipe said fermentation would be complete in 10-14 days. Haha, that's a long way off from 8 months to a year.
 
With that much honey being used for fermentables, you were not brewing an ale but rather a Bracket. It's a form of mead combining the ale and mead styles.

Anything with that much honey will create a high gravity wort that will be low in nutrients. The fermentation can take a very, very long time without the use of yeast nutrients and a very large starter.

You are correct in assuming that you botteled too soon. This one would have taken several monts to complete and mellow.
 
I'd check the current gravity of a bottle. If it is over 1030 and/or you consider it to be truly a disaster, you could decant it into a secondary fermentor and add a large starter of a dry mead yeast or the pastur red wine yeast along with some yeast nutrient. Give it a couple more months. No promises, but you've got a lot of cash invested already and it might save the batch.

I'd wear gloves & goggles opening the bottles.
 
david_42 said:
I'd check the current gravity of a bottle. If it is over 1030 and/or you consider it to be truly a disaster, you could decant it into a secondary fermentor and add a large starter of a dry mead yeast or the pastur red wine yeast along with some yeast nutrient. Give it a couple more months. No promises, but you've got a lot of cash invested already and it might save the batch.

I'd wear gloves & goggles opening the bottles.

I CONCUR.

However, I would fill a sink with water and put the bottle in the water (up to the neck) and pop the top...just in case. This way if the bottle explodes the water will slow down the impact. If it does the contents of the bottle are gone any way.
 
If I were to try this again, from scratch, at sometime...what would I alter to make this successful and a little dryer/more balanced? The type of yeast (someone else has suggested champagne yeast to lessen the sweetness)? The amount/kind of hops? dry-hopping, etc? I'm interested in making this work and have enough extra carboys that I can devote a 5-gallon one for a few months. Also, what is the least I should fiddle with it, i.e. how often should I check the gravity, etc? And finally, how could the authors of this book (endorsed by Papazian, I might add) be so wrong?! :confused:
 
I just checked the same book, pgs 21-22. It doesn't look like you did anything wrong, but 12 lbs of malt is a lot to ferment out in a short period.

If you take a look at the following recipe on pg 22 they use 10# light malt extract and 3# of honey (lots of malt). But in the narrative it says it's conditioned for 7-9 months...sound familiar?

This is one of the main reasons why I like notes so much. People just don't take enough of them and relate what the results were.
 
The main thing I would do differently is to make a large high gravity starter and monitor the SG. A large enough starter and it would be done in a month.

Another alternative is to make the ale and when the primary fermentation is done, move it to another fermentor, add the honey (use a little of the ale to dilute it) and re-pitch with some nutrient. Honey really puts a lot of osmotic pressure on the yeasts and makes it tough to draw sugars through their cell walls.
 
I've never brewed a high gravity batch before (not counting this disaster...haha), when it says something is conditioned for a period of months, that means it's just left in the secondary (in a dark place) for that time with temperature, etc remaining as stable as possible?
 
Actually, "conditioning" as in "bottle conditioning" is in the (small) bottles.

I keep mine in the carboy for months. I check the gravity about every 2 weeks and record it to see how fast/slow it is dropping to the target final gravity as set by the style.

If you brew a batch who's style OG is between 1.048-52 and you record 52 then you are at the high end of the range. Once it's within the final gravity range (between 1.008-12 for instance) then you should shoot for the high end of the FG. If it's sweeter than you expected then let it go a week longer and recheck the gravity then.
 
Right, bottle conditioning I understand. But conditioning as you cited from that recipe book refers to carboy conditioning, correct?
 
I've been brewing for five years and sometimes I still feel like such a novice! Haha. I guess I'm not as well traveled--at least with my styles--as I'd like to think.
 
can be either way. i don't bottle, so i condition a little longer in the secondary, unless it's a ale that can be consumed young. ESB's, Pale Ale's, Porters, etc.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top