I think i blew it...

Hey, all. New home brewer with 5 batches down. The fifth batch is my problem.

I'm a huge fan of Kiltlifter by Four Peaks (Arizona locals). It's a Scotch ale with an ABV of about 7%. I used a Brewers Best kit and added 3 pounds of table sugar to boost the gravity. All of the readings showed that everything was fine, but after bottling I found the taste to be really odd.

The head is thin, it's very carbonated but it doesn't stand up. When drinking, the initial flavor is a good Scotch ale, but the finish is almost candy sweet with really heavy sour. Did the table sugar muck things up, or did I maybe get an infected batch?

What temp did you ferment at?

I think what might have happened is that it fermented out pretty dry and sometimes your tongue will perceive dryness as kind of sour. That being said, looking at the ingredient kit, it looks like it's supposed to be pretty malty so it doesnt surprise me too much that it's a bit on the sweet side as well.

Did you use this kit or am I off base? What was your FG?

http://www.highgravitybrew.com/productcart/pc/Brewer-s-Best-Scottish-Ale-215p852.htm

Rest assure that it's not infected. I think you might be looking for Kiltlifter in your homebrewed batch and possibly not finding it if you know what I mean.

Yep, that's the kit.

I pitched at 76f and the fermentation ran between 74f and 78f for two weeks before bottling.

FG came out at 1.050, which shows a 4.75% ABV by my readings. Poor conversion? Gravity was there for three days. MYbe I had a stuck batch.

Wow, started high gravity and ended high. Sounds like the only thing that got really fermented out was the sugar. You ended higher than the kit's OG. Pretty crazy. What it really might be is that the yeast in the kit are kind of alcohol intolerant. The kit is a low OG, low FG, low ABV beer. For the next go-round I would try a liquid yeast like Wyeast 1728. That way it pushes that FG down and gets you better attenuation.

I'm thinking that the yeast provided with the kit wasn't very fresh. You should have had a much lower FG, this brings me to point two.
You can't just go by the calendar on fermenting beer, you need to watch the FG and if it is still this high, need to make special arrangements like adding another yeast to the carboy.
I would be afraid of bottle bombs with this beer if indeed your FG is that high.

Adding 3# of sugar will cause a cider and sour flavor. This is what happens when you put in sugar as a significant amount of the fermentables. It also can lower head retention. So yes... it was the 3# of sugar that was added. Also, adding that much table sugar without adding hops is fine because sugar ferments out almost 100%, if you tried that with malt you might have had an undrinkable beer with it being just too sweet because even dry malt does not ferment out all the way. When playing with augmenting, try to also increase the IBUs accordingly and stick with malt or candy sugar. Read a book called how to brew about adding adjuncts, this book is also on line and checking out that section on adjuncts and sugars would help.

asterix, I disagree that the sugar would by itself cause sourness or cidery flavors. That is a homebrew myth that continues to live on. I have made tripels with a significant portion of sugar added that never were cidery.

what was the FG?

In post 3 he states 1.050

Blith - have you contacted the brewery for a recipe? Kilt Lifter is an awesome brew, I would like to have a solid recipe myself.

If your fg is 1.050, I'd be keeping these bottles in something to prevent them from making a bomb all over your house. There is going to be a bottle bomb in there, inevitibly. With that much sugar, there is no logical reason for it to be that high. It should have all fermented out.

YOu have to have some patience with this. Just because it is stuck for three days doesn't mean anything, if you are only a week in. If you get stuck at such a high gravity, you need to look at ways to unstick it, not bottle it.

We say to use the "3 day" method when you are near your target FG, not when you are at some arbitrary super high fg.

Of the very few times I'd ditch a batch, this might be it. The risk of bottle bombs is insane in this.

onthekeg said:

asterix, I disagree that the sugar would by itself cause sourness or cidery flavors. That is a homebrew myth that continues to live on. I have made tripels with a significant portion of sugar added that never were cidery.

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With table sugar?

It will most definitely be cidery, green apply, or a bit sour with three pounds of the simplest sugar we know.

My guess is you either got impatient and bottled WAY too soon, or the yeast went after all the simple sugars first, then got lazy and refused to eat the more complex sugars.

Germelli1 said:

With table sugar?

It will most definitely be cidery, green apply, or a bit sour with three pounds of the simplest sugar we know.

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I disagree. My tripel recipe has about 10% sugar in it no issue with cidery or green apple flavors. Green apple will come from a hot fermentation and will age out. Cidery flavors, of which I guess I never have had, unless my cider counts won't age out.

My beer tastes like green apples (acetaldehyde)

Green apples are great, but pretty crappy in beers. If your beer has the flavor or aroma of green apples, this flavor is usually caused by acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde, sometimes called ethanal, is formed by the yeast before the Glucose is converted to alcohol.

Glucose -> pyruvic acid -> acetaldehyde -> ethanol

Since acetaldehyde is an intermediate step, usually “green” beers have this off-flavor.

The green apple flavor means the fermentation process halted before completion. This could be caused by pitching into wort with too little oxygen, not pitching the correct amount of yeast, or just racking your beer too early. If you haven’t already racked and kegged/bottled the beer, the solution is to warm up the fermenter a bit so the yeast can “finish the job”.

Apples are great, but green apples are sour and suck in beer.

Some literature and several books state adding too much cane or corn sugar will give beers a cidery flavor. It’s more likely the wort was nitrogen-deficient, oxygen deficient, or missing something else the yeast needed to complete the fermentaion. Many Belgian beers use sugar to lighten the body of the beer. I haven’t come across too many unintentionally cidery Belgian beers.

The reason many cite sugar as the culprit is table sugar is sucrose, a sugar which yeast cannot easily ferment. Sucrose (table sugar) however breaks into fructose and glucose, both easily fermented by yeast. Heat and acid (your wort) will easily break the bond of this disaccharide.

Green apple beers are usually “green beers”
Acetaldehyde is the compound usually associated with hangovers
Sugar isn’t usually the cause of cidery beer
Pitch proper amounts of yeast at a cooler fermentation temperature to avoid “green apples”

onthekeg said:

I disagree. My tripel recipe has about 10% sugar in it no issue with cidery or green apple flavors.

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Correct me if I am wrong, but 3 pounds of sugar would make up WAY more than 10% of the fermentables in a originally low OG recipe...

onthekeg said:

In post 3 he states 1.050

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I saw that ... I was just thinking he may have meant OG .. I did the math on tht kit just now tho .. and the 3 lbs of sugar would have taken the original kit OG of 1.038 to about 1.066 ... so maybe he did mean FG was 1.050 ... if that's true tho ... I'd be getting thos bottles uncapped and fast ... that sounds like bombs for sure .. maybe thats why he hasn't answered back yet .. he's cleaning up .. I hope not tho

Well, is the FG is stuck at 50, can you get some amalase enzymes? It would break down the dexitrins in the beer into ferment-able sugars.

In your triple do you use inverted candy sugar which is different then regular sucrose? I don't disagree with the science, but Noonan, Daniels and Palmer all say that adding too much sucrose to your fermentables does cause a cider flavor and can cause what Germelli1 said. The yeast got use to eating the sucrose or fructose+glucose and stopped eating the maltose, maltriose and maltase. This is also talked about in literature. I don't think we have ever heard of this since almost no one uses 3# of table sugar in their fermentables.

In a related note, I had a very strange swiss beer that was years old and had a significant off flavor which is sort of sour and like cider. It was fermented with a strange yeast but it also had a significant amount of sugar as a fermentable. I have a feeling that is the reason.

Thanks for all the info!

I just checked my notes and the OG was 1.086.

No bottle bombs yet, and it's been in the bottle for five weeks. I'm thinking I'll just chalk this up to experience and pitch the rest of the batch.

ultravista said:

Blith - have you contacted the brewery for a recipe? Kilt Lifter is an awesome brew, I would like to have a solid recipe myself.

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I couldn't get the brewmaster in Scottsdale to give it up. I've got a friend who might have an in, though, so that's my next step.

Just for excitement, I kept a case of this batch. No bombs yet, and it gets more awful each week. I'm Dumping it next recycling run.

I'm chalking the batch up as a learning experience.

Blith said:

I couldn't get the brewmaster in Scottsdale to give it up. I've got a friend who might have an in, though, so that's my next step.

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If you can find anything, let the world know! Their kiltlifter is crazy good!

I agree with some of the others that adding all that table sugar was you problem. It will dry out your beer. The other guy talked about adding candy sugar to his Tripel. Well Tripels are supposed to be pretty dry. Scotch Ales are supposed to be malty

You could pour it back into a carboy and add brett like B or L. Just a thought but at least it'd eat up the dextrins.

What was the reasoning behind adding 3 whole lbs of table sugar? I can't think of any scenario where that would add to the quality of the finished product, so that leaves me thinking the intent was to boost the ABV.

Now, I don't have any particular problem with brewing a high ABV beer, in fact I highly encourage it (especially if you're having me come over to drink them with you). But why not just start out with a recipe that's intended to be high ABV in the first place?

I can see sneaking in a smidgen of sugar to bump the ABV just a bit, but really, 3 lbs of that stuff is starting to become a significantly large portion of the entire recipe. Of course it's not going to taste right.

I would keep some around and see if they change over the year.High gravity ales are usually meant to age a while.My guess would be flavor changes in a few months but that does seem like a large amount of sugar.It may get better but by how much who knows,let us know.