Great fermentability (from 1.084 to 1.010!)

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.

Steve973

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2005
Messages
298
Reaction score
2
Location
Baltimore, MD
We just bottled our second belgian dark strong ale. We didn't get super great mash efficiency, and we hit 1.084 instead of the expected 1.092 or something like that, but we attenuated down to 1.010 at bottling time, which was much better than we expected. So, we hit our 10% abv goal anyway, and the mouthfeel certainly isn't bad as a result. We made our candi sugar by inverting some turbinado, and that worked out really well - definitely better than buying it from the store. you can definitely notice the flavor/color difference. Now, we used 6 ounces of leftover turbinado sugar to get some good volumes of CO2, and we corked and caged the champagne bottles on Sunday. There was one extra bottle that we'll use for a tester in 2 weeks, and if that went well, we'll start popping corks about a month from bottling time. All in all, the beer will be about five months old at that point since the secondary fermentation lasted about three freakin' months!
 
Amazing attenuation, I've never had a high gravity ale with such a low FG. How much candi did you use?
 
Yeah, that is great. What yeast did you use?

I've used Turbinado before in beers with great results. I just dumped the granules straight in. How easy was it to convert it to homemade candi sugar and do you think it makes a difference vs. straight granules?
 
Rhoobarb said:
Yeah, that is great. What yeast did you use?

I've used Turbinado before in beers with great results. I just dumped the granules straight in. How easy was it to convert it to homemade candi sugar and do you think it makes a difference vs. straight granules?

I made sort-of dark candi sugar from turbinado for my dubbel. No worries--works exactly the same as with table sugar.
 
We used Wyeast 3787 (or was it 3878?)... and we dumped some White Labs High Gravity yeast into the secondary, and the fermentation was LOOOOONNNGGG! We used ~2lbs of homemade candi sugar. It was super easy to make it. Just boil it on the stove with a little water and citric acid powder, and did that long enough to get the desired color. I've never used straight granules, but you wouldn't get the same carmelization as you would if you boil it in a pot until you get the desired darkness. Other than that, I've never used the granules straight. And I don't know if it matters, but you might not get complete inversion if you dump it straight into the boil pot, either.
 
That's almost the exact attenuation of my belgian strong when I put it into the secondary a few weeks ago.

P.S. How did bottling go? Did you use the italian floor corker? Ease or difficulty? Are you aging them standing up or on their sides? Did you add any yeast prior to bottling? What volume of CO2 are you going for?
 
I'm going for a volume of about 3.0. We used plastic corks, so we just pushed them in and caged them. We added another vial of the White Labs High Gravity yeast for bottling. We're not fooling around - with a ten percent beer, we want to make sure that the yeast has no problems doing what it needs to do for carbonation. They will remain standing up, since the corks aren't prone to drying out :)
 
sweet. I'm starting to lean towards the plastic corks myself as the real kind is starting to look like it is going to be a real pain in the arse. I'm thinking of a volume of about 3.5 to 3.7, but I haven't completely decided yet.
 
Back
Top