A Monster Beer. What to do from here?

Tried to make a Barleywine with a friend of mine tonight, and we need some advice on what to do from this point.

5 gallon
14lb LME

Steeped around 155
1lb Crystal 55L
.7lb Carastan 35-37L

2oz Magnum 14.4% 60 min
2oz Cascade 6% 30 min
1oz Centennial 10% 2 min
1oz DH

The OG reading was 1.122! We pitched Wyeast 3787 Trappist High Gravity yeast at 75deg.

I'm hoping that yeast will rock the shi* out of the brew, but I'm kind of worried about the alcohol tolerance of the yeast.

The online description of the yeast says: Alcohol Tolerance: 11 to 12% ABV or higher.

Not sure if there was even a better choice in terms of the yeast, but I'm seeing the potential ABV hitting ~16%.

I'm also worried about the krausen blowing the top. I'm using an S-type airlock. I've never dealt with a blow-off and don't have the tubing to deal with it at the moment.

Any tips on what to do with such a big beer? I'm guessing that the beer won't even hit its flavor peak for many months.

Well by my calcs, you probably won't hit above 10.5% ABV. With strong ales below 12%, it depends less on the yeast strain then it does amount of yeast and oxygenation of wort. If you didn't make a starter, chances are it might not attenuate all the way...so the beer will be a bit more on the sweeet side.

I agree with the fact that you're going to have to age the Barleywine for AT LEAST a few months before it's any good. I'd say you could try it at 3, but you probably won't like the outcome until about 6 months. I think 12 months and up is where it'll really hit it's sweet spot.

How much headspace do you have in your fermenter? If you only have a gallon headspace, you're more than likely going to have blow-off issues, and I would invest the time to set up a blow-off tube.

I won't pretend to be an expert on how the yeast will behave in those gravities. I'm gonna guess you'll be fine, until it reaches the final stages, and you may find you'll have attenuation issues. You might consider finishing the fermentation with champagne yeast, but I would recommend you check out http://www.whitelabs.com/gravity.html and follow those tips, they will really help with your attenuation.

Good luck!

How late is your LHBS open? Do you have a 3 piece airlock at home? If you do hit the nearest hardware store and pick up some tubing.

davesrose said:

Well by my calcs, you probably won't hit above 10.5% ABV. With strong ales below 12%, it depends less on the yeast strain then it does amount of yeast and oxygenation of wort. If you didn't make a starter, chances are it might not attenuate all the way...so the beer will be a bit more on the sweeet side.

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We shook the hell out of it for a good 5 minutes. Also we used a smack-pack, which is a starter on its own, right?

YouHadMeAtASL said:

Also we used a smack-pack, which is a starter on its own, right?

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No, a smack pack should be considered equivalent to a vial of White Labs. Yes, in general terms, the smack pack creates a very small starter when you smack it. But it alone is generally not exceptable for batches that are over by 1.080 (at the max I'd say). For a barleywine, it's good to pitch at least two of those...or go with a starter.

It's not really a starter, no. It wakes the yeast up, gets them ready to be tossed into wort, but that's about it. And for a barleywine, you would need a very large starter to get good pitching rates.

The yeast might take off well, and may even ferment down all the way - especially since it sounds like it was well aerated. But the yeast will have to replicate like crazy at first, and that will create all sorts of esters and other flavors. Fortunately you're planning on aging this beer longterm, so that might take the edge off.

Alright. We're set and ready for blow off. Time to drink now.

davesrose said:

No, a smack pack should be considered equivalent to a vial of White Labs. Yes, in general terms, the smack pack creates a very small starter when you smack it. But it alone is generally not exceptable for batches that are over by 1.080 (at the max I'd say). For a barleywine, it's good to pitch at least two of those...or go with a starter.

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Can we repitch another one Monday or is that poor form?

Yeah, the more the merrier: Monday is not too late, as I suspect it's going to take awhile to get your barleywine to ferment all the way.

Your OG seems high, 1.104 sounds right.

I have a batch with 3787 atm and it has a couple inches of krausen. With an S lock I'd think you could have some problems. You can wait for fermentation to start then remove the airlock and cover with aluminum foil until it slows down. It will produce enough CO2 that you won't risk anything. Though you may find a piece of tube will fit nicely in the grommets, assuming you use a bucket.

that blowoff should do the trick...what is that a carlo rossi jug??

If you can, set up a swamp cooler for the first few days. It has been my experience that, even under pitching as you have, with decent temp control at the begining you can reduce yeast stress and off flavors. Other than that, give it time. In every phase of the process, plan on it taking at least twice as long as a normal brew. As an example, I brewed a Belgian Strong on Memorial day with an OG of 1.155, it just left secondary 2 weeks ago and is only now starting to round out.

mhumm1 said:

that blowoff should do the trick...what is that a carlo rossi jug??

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That's a gallon of apple juice from my Graff. Boom. Mhumm. I should probably be rhumm.

Pretty excited about this batch, the guy at the store told us it was an "ambitious project" for our experience level. Think it will be well worth the wait.

so...did the blowoff work? was it even needed?

mhumm1 said:

so...did the blowoff work? was it even needed?

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It never blew off, but the tube is still in there. The krausen got pretty close but was still about 1.5 in. away from blowing out. I could probably replace it w/the airlock, but that would require more sanitation. And I'm lazy at the moment.

Mongrel said:

How late is your LHBS open? Do you have a 3 piece airlock at home? If you do hit the nearest hardware store and pick up some tubing.

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that's EXACTLY what I do! 3/8th siphon/ bottling hose that comes with kit is a perfect fit! (imagine that!)

good action

starrfish said:

that's EXACTLY what I do! 3/8th siphon/ bottling hose that comes with kit is a perfect fit! (imagine that!)

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Really? Mine uses a 1/2" tube also used with larger siphons. It's pretty snug too... very tricky to pull off.

Speaking of blow-offs, I nearly just jumped out of my seat... my blow-off from a milk stout I brewed last night just GROWLED at me

(Oh... and pitching a smack pack straight into a barleywine? Holy crap.)

I have several old 3piece bubblers. siphon hose is snug but they fit esp after a hot water dip maybe I've stretched My blow off hose I only use that piece for blow off and that's been around since the dawn of my brewing! LOL

emjay said:

Really? Mine uses a 1/2" tube also used with larger siphons. It's pretty snug too... very tricky to pull off.

Speaking of blow-offs, I nearly just jumped out of my seat... my blow-off from a milk stout I brewed last night just GROWLED at me

(Oh... and pitching a smack pack straight into a barleywine? Holy crap.)

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Can you explain a little about the smack pack? Do you say this because we are really stressing the multiplication of the yeast, which will cause massive off-flavors?

Mr. Malty says you should have used 4 smack packs or a big ass starter to get that thing going. It's gonna take a bit to get the yeast where they really need to be in order to ferment properly.

We pitched 2 smack packs of 3787 trappist HG into this. The second smack pack was pitched 2 days after the initial pitching, which was Monday. Do we need more than that, and if so is it too late to pitch more? Thanks.

YouHadMeAtASL said:

We shook the hell out of it for a good 5 minutes. Also we used a smack-pack, which is a starter on its own, right?

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You pitched one smack pack for a beer that big? You're really supposed to make a starter with a smack pack for anything over about 1.035; http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html has a pitching rate calculator that's handy.

That said, with the addition of the 2nd you've done what you can. It'll still make beer; it may be a little more estery than you wanted and a little less attenuated.

Your OG was probably closer to 1.108, BTW; I assume you did a partial boil? Layering of the topoff water often throws off the OG measurement--in partial boils, calculating it by hand is generally more accurate than measuring. At 1.108, you're looking at a 10-10.5ish% ABV, depending on what kind of attenuation you get.

It shouldn't be too late. The guys that made the Utopia clones were adding oxygen, sugar, and yeast weeks into the brewing (if memory serves my right).
The brew is going to take at least a month to fully attenuate, after another week, it will come to a very, very slow crawl.
Pitch some more yeast, and give it time. You could even hit it with a little more O2 if it stops way before a reasonable FG.

"You pitched one smack pack for a beer that big? You're really supposed to make a starter with a smack pack for anything over about 1.035"

Honestly we just followed the recipe we had and that was about it. It was our first time making a barleywine so we weren't exactly sure about everything. If I need to throw another smack pack in, or two, I certainly will. I don't have any experience with making a starter yet, but after your advice I will certainly read up on how to do it. For the amount of time this batch is going to take, I just hope it comes out somewhat drinkable haha.

Just a note for that yeast:

I've used 3787 a couple times in the past and you're going to have a huge fluffy krausen for a couple weeks. Mine usually falls after about 3 weeks, but it is by far the biggest one that I've had using any yeast.

Good luck with that project!

SumnerH said:

Your OG was probably closer to 1.108, BTW; I assume you did a partial boil? Layering of the topoff water often throws off the OG measurement--in partial boils, calculating it by hand is generally more accurate than measuring. At 1.108, you're looking at a 10-10.5ish% ABV, depending on what kind of attenuation you get.

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We shook the hell out of it and then took the OG reading, so I don't think the topoff water was much of an issue there.

YouHadMeAtASL said:

We shook the hell out of it and then took the OG reading, so I don't think the topoff water was much of an issue there.

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The numbers don't add up, though--with what you posted (14 lbs of LME, 1 lb crystal 55, .7 lbs carastan in 5 gallons of beer), there's no way your OG was 1.122--even with 100% utilization of the steeping grains you wouldn't get that high, and on a typical steep you only get 40%ish utilization.

There was a hydrometer measurement error (due to topoff or bubbles or user error or something else), or you didn't make a full 5 gallons, or the actual fermentables you added were something different, or something.

SumnerH said:

The numbers don't add up, though--with what you posted (14 lbs of LME, 1 lb crystal 55, .7 lbs carastan in 5 gallons of beer), there's no way your OG was 1.122--even with 100% utilization of the steeping grains you wouldn't get that high, and on a typical steep you only get 40%ish utilization.

There was a hydrometer measurement error (due to topoff or bubbles or user error or something else), or you didn't make a full 5 gallons, or the actual fermentables you added were something different, or something.

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I think you may be right about not making 5 gallons Sumner. We may have been a little low. Need to start marking the 5 gallon mark on the carboys.

wow... you guys are braver than me!

I'd personally recommend using a 1.25 inch blowoff hose. I've had a couple of the 3pc airlocks get shot into the ceiling already, even with the top removed.

rcbishop said:

wow... you guys are braver than me!

I'd personally recommend using a 1.25 inch blowoff hose. I've had a couple of the 3pc airlocks get shot into the ceiling already, even with the top removed.

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we be loco ese

Just took a gravity reading on it. 1.059 and still bubbling like a madman. We've pitched 2 of the Wyeast Trappist high gravity 3787. Going to pitch another one soon just to make sure we keep on fermenting through it.

YouHadMeAtASL said:

Just took a gravity reading on it. 1.059 and still bubbling like a madman. We've pitched 2 of the Wyeast Trappist high gravity 3787. Going to pitch another one soon just to make sure we keep on fermenting through it.

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Sounds like a good plan (and a better beer) y'all. Wish I could try the final product!

let 'r ride if it's still bubbling (esp w/ 3787) let it ride... if your worried about final gravity add a us05 at bottle to carb it, but other wise you"ll be fine.3787 is a beast & a half! should wake up enough to carb! I wouldn't add any more!

So a bit of an update: on 3/1 before we pitched the 2 smack packs of 3787 the gravity was 1.046. We pitched them and gave it some time. Took a gravity reading today and the gravity is still 1.046.....obviously the fermentation stalled. Being relatively new to brewing and not having dealt with this issue yet is there anything we can do to restart the fermentation? Looks like our current abv would be 11.66 but we were targeting around 13%. I'm not worried about the abv so much as it being way too sweet. Thanks!

You can try swirling the carboy to get your lazy yeast into suspension and moving the carboy to a slightly warmer location (not too much or you may get off flavours).

My 999 Barleywine was way overshot at ~1.165 (my scale ends at 1.150) and stalled at about 1.050. I shook it every day and put it in a warmer closet and it went down another few points. Eventually I made a gallon starter of WLP099 High Grav and pitched that. It finally gave up at 1.032 after nearly 3 months. After another 6 months it was just becoming drinkable and at a year it was good. I'm down to just 3 bottles and they last one I had a month ago was spectacular. I guess the moral here is patience is key when dealing with big beers.

Terje

Swirl the fermenter around and increase the temperature 1 degree or so per day, up to 75 or so if necessary. So much fermentation has already gone on and it's such a massively flavorful beer, that any off-flavors created at this point are going to be negligible and possibly just add a tiny bit of complexity. Drying out a beer with an increase in temperature towards the end is a very acceptable technique and since only a small fraction of presumably higher-order sugars are left, it's nothing like fermenting the whole beer too warm.

You DID severely underpitch so you might need even more, I don't really know for sure. Since it may just be that the yeast is having difficulty eating up the polysaccharides like maltotriose, it's probably important to be providing them with additional FAN and other good stuff with a quality yeast nutrient supplement when you start raising the temperature. I've also had great success adding amylase to the fermenter as well.