More dry after bottling

I brewed an English brown ale that has been bottled for about six weeks now. It was ok after 2 weeks in the bottle. It improved slightly after a couple more weeks in the bottle. Now after 6 to 7 weeks in the bottle it seems to have dryed out quite a bit. It's not nearly as malty as it was which I think is not an improvement. What gives? The recipe had LME and DME. Nottingham yeast.

Is there any chance you're serving it too cold?

Also check the recent Nottingham thread and see if any of the discussion there rings a bell for what you're experiencing.

Does it seem more carbed than you were expecting? If so, maybe fermentation wasn't all the way done and the Nottingham chewed up another point or three of gravity in addition to the priming sugar.

I suppose it may be a little cold, but does that make it seem more dry? I doubt it wasn't done frementing. I let it sit in primary for ten days then had it in secondary for two weeks.

Did you add honey to it by any chance?

Nottingham can dry out beers due to its tenacity. As revvy mentioned, and I have experienced, a honey+ nottingham beer can = super-dry beer after awhile. This would also occur if any simple sugar was added to the boil.

No honey added. No simple sugar added. I primed with 5oz. of dextrose into a bottling bucket. It's like a wave of doneness. (?) When I first tried it, it was a little green and need time. A few weeks later, I thought it had improved greatly. A few weeks after that and it was perfect. Now, it's definitely dried out. It's almost like Old Speckled Hen. Like I used a wine yeast or something. Only fermentables in the brew were LME and DME.

Hmmm....And no other adjuncts beside the the extract and priming sugar?

And are you 100% sure it was done fermenting before you racked to secondary or bottled it?

Just out of curiosity, post your recipe....I think it has to be about the amount of fermentables (including priming sugar) vs the "hungriness" of the nottingham. The yeast was still hungry at bottling time and obviously devoured every bit of priming sugar available, over the weeks it was in the bottle....

I just found this thread about nottingham....Just reading it lends me to believe that it is one mutha of sugar eater!
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=51135

That's probably why it ended up soooo dry.

Take a read and see what you think...even ask people on there about dryness....

what temp were the bottles stored at? maybe a higher temp kept the yeast overly active in the bottles?

68-70. The gravity was spot on what the expected gravity was supposed to be. I can't say for sure it was done because I only took one FG reading. I assumed it was done because it had been more than 3 weeks from brew day and 2 weeks with no airlock activity. The FG was right where I expected it to be.

count barleywine said:

what temp were the bottles stored at? maybe a higher temp kept the yeast overly active in the bottles?

Click to expand...

I thought fermentation is finished, that sugar is that's left over is there to stay (because in some way it is "unfermentable"). So when you bottle, the yeast will gobble up the priming sugar, but it won't spark up again and eat the remaining original sugars, will it?