Did I ruin it?

I was trying to make a SNPA clone the other day and I intended on splitting the malt up for early and late additions to help boost the ABV. The problem is that I got interrupted during the boil and forgot to add the malt until there was 15 minutes left in the boil. Obviously my OG ended up being much higher than what I expected it to be (1.065 vs 1.056). At first I just thought great my ABV will be MUCH higher but after three days in the fermentor the bubbling has nearly quit and the liquid is very cloudy. Did I ruin the beer? I only used one package of yeast and I am worried that I should have used two packages of yeast to make this work. What are my options? I am worried that I will need to throw this out because if will not fully ferment.

No, it will be fine. Really, it sounds like you did everything right. Were you using dry or liquid yeast? 3 days active fermenting is normal, and it will take a week or more longer to clean up and clarify. I bet it's mostly done, but give it at least a week before checking gravity.

Also, I'm pretty sure the time you add the extract makes no difference to the OG. Maybe a liquid vs dry extract difference?

Adding the malt later shouldn't change the OG. Either way, I'd be more concerned about changes in the hop utilization due to lack of malt in the boil. I've never boiled hops with no extract, so I'm not sure what the result will be, but it's going to be to different than expected.

You need some extract in the boil to best utilize the alpha acids, and a good way to optimize this is if you're doing a partial boil to boil the portion of the extract you would normally add for a full boil at the start with the bittering hops, and add the rest at the end, 15 mins prior to flame out. For example if you're boiling 2.5gal for a 5gal batch, add half the extract at the start, and the rest at the end.

PoppinCaps said:

No, it will be fine. Really, it sounds like you did everything right. Were you using dry or liquid yeast? 3 days active fermenting is normal, and it will take a week or more longer to clean up and clarify. I bet it's mostly done, but give it at least a week before checking gravity.

Also, I'm pretty sure the time you add the extract makes no difference to the OG. Maybe a liquid vs dry extract difference?

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I was using liquid yeast and liquid extract. From everything I have read a late addition of extract will boost the OG because it does not have enough time to breakdown. I'm sure there is a more technical reference but I think that is the just of it. Usually when I split the extract I add half at the beginning of the boil and half somewhere in the middle 30 minutes or so.

Badseed said:

I was using liquid yeast and liquid extract. From everything I have read a late addition of extract will boost the OG because it does not have enough time to breakdown. I'm sure there is a more technical reference but I think that is the just of it. Usually when I split the extract I add half at the beginning of the boil and half somewhere in the middle 30 minutes or so.

Click to expand...

the amount of extract and steeping/mash grains used will be the only determination for OG - when it's added will make no difference. you aren't really breaking down the LME during the boil, the yeast do that and they don't care if it's added at 60min or 1min

the reason people do late additions for extract is to avoid excessive carmelization of the extract which can result in a darker color beer

your OG reading was likely off if you did a partial boil w/ top off as it's hard to properly measure the OG due to difficulties mixing wort and water