AHS Gulden Draak Clone: Never Carbed. What went wrong?

So My buddies and I brewed the AHS Gulden Draak Clone last spring. It was an extract batch with steeping grains.

The OG was 1.112. We brewed it on 3/20/11, we pitched Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey Ale yeast, and by 4/22/11 the gravity was at 1.030 and was still at 1.030 on 4/29/11.

This was a little higher than the recipe called for, but being used to extract batches finishing high, we bottled it.

My notes fail here, but I think we used ~ 5 oz Dextrose, or the typical pack of 5 gallon priming sugar that usually comes with an extract kit.

Then we let it sit, and sit, and sit.

It never carbed. I mean never, I was still opening bombers in November that were just as flat as on bottling day. Which was a bummer, because the hydro samples were very, VERY, close to what Gulden Draak tastes like. We thought we had a home run.

The ambient temperatures were on average between 62-72 F the whole time, except for a few weeks in July and August when it got up to the mid 80's.

Where did I go wrong, and what should I do next time to make sure this carbs up?

Thanks for the help.

You may have topped out. Your yeast. How long was the fermentation? Did you use a starter? Did you bottle with fresh yeast?

I did not use a starter, I think I used two smack packs instead.

The fermentation was about 5 weeks in a long primary, which hasn't caused problems with yeast viability for conditioning for me in the past.

I did not bottle with fresh yeast.

1.112-1.030 is only about 73% attenuation, and that strain is supposed to be good for 74-78%, according to Wyeast.

Bump

May not have been enough yeast there for such a high gravity beer, which meant that by bottling time, they were just fried. Usually, there is no need to picth more yeast, but it sounds like you could have used a small amont to kick off bottling.

Where's that Revvy when you need him?

Yes it sounds like you significantly underpitched. Per mrmralty looks like you would need 4-11 packages of yeast without a starter depending on the packaging date of the yeast.

So I would say pitch the correct amount next time and consider adding yeast at bottling for a beer this big. Here's a BYO article on the subject:

http://***********/stories/techniqu...212-on-the-yeast-guide-to-bottle-conditioning

OMG - I just discovered Gulden Draak a day or so ago and nearly swooned! Please report if you solve this problem.

Thanks for the feed back guys.

Homebrewdad; indeed, where is Revvy when you need him!
Chickypad; thanks for the link, it looks like an intersting article.

I wouldn't have tought that the underpitching was an issue since this beer did come fairly close to the target OG, and there didn't seem to be any off flavors from underpitching.

When selecting a yeast for a secondary/bottle fermentation, what strains would be best? I know it needs to be fairly alcohol tolerant, since a beer this big will have a fairly high ABV, but wouldn't a champagne style yeast strip out all the residual sugars and leave it dry and watery, where as a neutral yeast like S-05 just go into shock from the alcohol content? What yeast would be best for repitching at bottling?

If I had made a big starter for this, would repitching at bottling have been necessary anyway?

Your FG was a little high, was it not? That, and the fact that it didn't carb - combined with the calculator - screams "underpitched" to me.

I'm thinking that you would not have had the issue with a good starter.

NO, I see that. It was underpitched, it just seemed to get through the primary ok so, I thought it would have carbed.

I will do a starter next time, I'm just wondering about repitching at bottling now and what's best to use for it, and if I will need to when using an appropriate cell count for the primary.

Thanks again.

PS A "little" high?

D0ug said:

NO, I see that. It was underpitched, it just seemed to get through the primary ok so, I thought it would have carbed.

I will do a starter next time, I'm just wondering about repitching at bottling now and what's best to use for it, and if I will need to when using an appropriate cell count for the primary.

Thanks again.

Click to expand...

I have never done a repitch; I've seen people mention a neutral dry yeast as best for this. Come on, experts... chime in!

I don't think you'd have had to do this at the right cell count. I would worry, though, that repitching might get fermentation going again since you finished high.

Ah yeah, like I said it was extract with specialty grains.

It was 73% apparent attenuation, which is right at the lower end for that yeast, so I wouldn't have thought it was "stuck" but maybe?

The extract batches usually finish high for me, even with a normal beer, ~1.055 and S-05, 0.005 points high hasn't been that unusual. So with a beer this big, I didn't even blink at 7 points, maybe I need to reconsider that though.

How high is too high?

I didn't answer because it looked to me like you got your answer. With extremely high gravity beers, due to the exhaustion of the yeast, it can take 6 months in my experience for a beer to carb unless you added fresh yeast at bottling time.

At this stage it's important that if you attempt to fix this, that you make sure you know if your priming sugar was fermented out or not. This is the tricky part. Because it it wasn't then you don't need to add fresh sugar along with the yeast. Obviously if there is sugar present and you add fresh along with the yeast then you could be setting up for bottle bombs.

Unfortunately that part of it I can't help you with.

How long have they been bottled? And THEY ARE above 70 degrees, right? You are in the range for the yeast to be working, right?

If that's the case then re-yeasting is the answer. Uncap the bottles, sprinkle some dry yeast in bottle, recap, and give a bit of a shake.

Probably the best way would be to rehydrate said yeast in water (or use liquid) get a children's medicine dropper with ML gradients like this,



Open beer bottle, suck up slurry into sanitized eyedropper, squirt 1-2ml of yeast into bottle, then re-cap.

The thing about the sugar is hard.....if you are adding sugar, as well, you can get some of those munton's carb tabs, OR rehydrate your yeast in your sugar solution and add that to the bottles.

I think I would go with carb tabs or even maybe a sugar cube. But like I said determining if you need to add sugar or not is the challenging part.

Thanks for the response Revvy.

They were bottled for about 7 months, they were in the temp range for the yeast, and they were over 70 for most of the time, below that occasionally, but never below the mid 60's.( they were in a dark corner of the basement)

You probably don't get into situations like this, but are there any particular strains of yeast you recommend when re-pitching for bottle conditioning a bigger beer (~10% ABV).

And by getting an answer for the issue, I assume you mean "Pitch the right amount of yeast in the first place, dumb4$$!"

Thanks for the tips on dealing with pitching directly to bottles.

I guess I need to figure out if this stopped because the yeast pooped out, or because the fermentables were consumed. But I'm leaning towards tired yeast because I added enough priming sugar to get at least a little carbonation.

Thanks again.

THIS was the right answer I saw when I glanced at the thread..

mlg5039 said:

You may have topped out. Your yeast. How long was the fermentation? Did you use a starter? Did you bottle with fresh yeast?

Click to expand...

(I bet he was typing on a phone, hence the period) But I'm sure he meant that your yeast reached the max amount of abv it could handle before dying, and that's why he asked about bottling with fresh yeast.

Making a yeast starter or pitching the right amount of yeast, may or may not have helped. Even the right amount of yeast can top out if the gravity of the beer is higher than the yeast's tolerance. Maybe having "enoguh" yeast would have helped, but who really knows.

The "preventative measure" for this in the future is when you're making a high grav beer to add more yeast at bottling time. You can either use more of what you pitched originally OR, many folks use champagne yeast.

That way you make sure you have some new troops to do the last part of the job.

I just wish I could tell you if you should add more sugar or not...

You might wanna try this...Since you have already waited, if you don't mind. Why don't you take 2-3 bottles, Just yeast them and see if that works by itself after 3-4 weeks. If it doesn't then you know you need to add fresh sugar as well.

Just a thought.

Thanks again Revvy and all for the feedback.

Sorry if the I have belabored the point, I was just trying to get clarity, which you've provided.

Next time will be a success!

I haven't done the AHS kit, but I have done NB's Golden Dragon kit. It recommended a long primary and an even longer cold secondary. I pitched T-58 into the secondary two days prior to bottling. I still have some that are 3 years old and getting better as they age. IIRC I primaried for 2 months and secondaried for 8, bottle conditioned for 2 months. This beer is awesome, highly recommended.

Yeah, I want to try this again as soon as I have the funds.

Great to know..ordered the GD clone a week ago. On its way now. One of my favs for sure! Pirate next..

What ever happened with this batch?