Barleywine and old ale help!

Hey there,

So I brewed a barleywine and old ale. They both stopped fermenting at 1.040 - OG was 1.100. Too sweet for my tastes. I cannot get the ferment to retsart, not even champagne yeast worked. Problem was that I used RO water.

'Nuff said.


What do I do? I'm thinking of adding::
hop tea AND/OR small amount of whiskey and medium-toast oak beans

Anything else I can add to make these drinks palatable??? I'd hate to throw them but would prefer not to drink poor-tasting beer when I have so much good stuff here.

Thanks all!

grind up beano, then rack onto a monster yeast cake! if that fails.... add 10lbs of honey and make a braggot!

Done all of that, except the beano and honey.

No yeast will ferment in the beer. End of story.

So what can I do to make the sweeeeeet beer tasty?
It's just totally out of balance. Blegh.

Dry hop it and deal with it.Or pour it out and waste $.

I would set it aside and blend it with fresh beer. You could age it out, sour it. Brett bugs will take the gravity down if given some time.

You could blend it with another beer and oak it.....

Your could freeze concentrate it and use it for barley wine ice cream floats or as a barley wine liquor.

i think you should sour it!

(cugel hates sour beers!)

Same exact problem here. I'm actually gonna do the brett and charred oak and put it away for a few months. It's drinkable as is, but I'm really curious now.

I've had bad luck with re-pitching conventional yeast, so I'd rather try something a bit different.

Alpha amylaze may drop it 7-8 points with daily swirling to rouse yeast. After a week of that, a pound of honey will probably get it a lot closer to drinkability. If it's still a little too sweet and the style/flavor allows for it, dry hopping will help balance it further.

edit: I don't know what your recipe was, but it sounds like the yeast have ran out of fermentable, or easily fermentables, under the current conditions. Also, racking onto a starter would be my first suggestion, but looks like you done that already.

Amylaze enzyme will get you some drop in gravity. Maybe as much as 10 points. Give that a try.

If the champagne yeast wouldn't ferment, you ran out of fermentable sugars. I'm guessing you used too much crystal malt and/or got too much caramelization in the kettle. If you added brett you could get both of them down to a very dry beer, since brett will consume those dextrins. It doesn't necessarily have to be sour but brett will definitely throw off it's funky flavors.

Amylaze (and maybe dry hopping) will get you to a more balanced beer.

Otherwise, you can add honey or add some very simple 2 row-based wort and dry it out with more alcohol.

Recipe? Was it all-grain, and if so, what mash temp?