Can I re-heat up beer to convert unfermentables??

Hello cyberbrewers!

So I have a question.. pretty simple.
Can I heat up a beer to mashing temperature, and add some amylase to convert some unfermentable sugars that I got from botching my mash the first time (uncalibrated thermometer.stupid.)???

Anyway if this would work and I could just pitch again that would be cool as I already have 15 gallons of this sweet, pseudo alcoholic, children's "beer" kegged, and it would be great if I could salvage the last 5gs.

Any advice (that isn't to get my **** together) is greatly appreciated.

Alpha Amylase should covert unfermentables without heat, AFAIK.

mdgagne is correct, but if the beer has already fermented, the pH may have dropped quite a bit. You shouldn't need to heat it up, but check to make sure that AE will even work in fermented beer.

I tried the amylase in the fermentor, and got nothing.

If I cannot get this thing down to a decent FG (it's at 1.030 ATM), any ideas of what do with it are welcome.

Re-pitch another yeast that has high attenuation.

seedyram said:

I tried the amylase in the fermentor, and got nothing.

If I cannot get this thing down to a decent FG (it's at 1.030 ATM), any ideas of what do with it are welcome.

Click to expand...

1 - add in yeast nutrient
2 - gently stir it up to resuspend the yeast
3 - warm up the yeast to 75 F to see if that gets them going

if that fails

4 - Make a 2 liter starter of a yeast that has high attenuation. (you want a lot of yeast)

You could also pitch a Brett. strain and make it funky. Brett'll eat anything

beano and a fresh pitch of active yeast and raise the temp into the 70's or 80's

Refractometer or hydrometer reading, if the former use the latter, you may be surprised.

Sometimes its give up the goat and try again. I know its frowned upon by some, but it's quite liberating to pour out a sub par beer and start over. Just not what you did wrong and try again.

Anyway, Beta-amylase is what you will need to convert unfermentables to fermentables. Alpha is the debranching enzyme that works at higher temps to break up starch to make it more accessible to Beta.