13.52 ABV on a Wheat??!!

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
YooperBrew said:
The 4 pounds of DME would raise you to 1.059.

The priming sugar would raise you a insignificant amount. What I assume happened is that you didn't get a thorough mix of wort/water when you pulled your sample. The wort is heavier than the top up water, and it's incredibly difficult to get it to mix well. Unless you added an additional 6 pounds of sugar, your OG was NOT 1.112, and your yeast would have never fermented it that low regardless. There is no way to have such a high OG unless you didn't add water to 5 gallons, or unless you added more fermentables.

With the 4 pounds of DME, and 3.3 pounds of LME, your ABV would be 5.1%.
Click to expand...


+1

regardless of the out come of this
congrats on your first brew
 
Cheeto, thank you...I did not start this forum to brag or anything, this is our first brew and we are trying to figure out how we got this reading and wanted to know what you all think...
 
Well the girlfriend downstairs is getting upset im not watching a movie with her so I gotta run, I will be back here in a few hours, thanks for all your replies and help we will see what happens in a few weeks when we try it :)
 
NoClueBrewery said:
We took the sample (originally) after we mixed everything together and before we added the yeast.... I'm pretty sure we mixed it all together sufficiently but i may be wrong...
Click to expand...


You have to mix it _a lot_ to get it fully mixed. It always feels like I am mixing for a really long time, and I still don't think that I get it fully mixed.
 
Ok, so this is Tony and I am one of the no clue brewers. The deal with this batch is as follows:

3.3 lb of LME hopped
7lb of mortons wheat DME
Coopers Ale yeast

We boiled 2 gallons of water, took off heat, and added DME/LME

Brought it back to a boil for 45 minutes

Added hot wort to 3 gallons of cold water in Carboy. On this batch, we didnt cool the wort down fast enough, and had to wait about 5-6 hours til we could pitch.

Thats it... I am the person that took the OG readings. The wort was FULLY mixed with the water before the reading was taken. Also, the reading was taken about 1 minute before the yeast was pitched. Even if the original addition of the wort to the carboy was not mixed, after 6 hours of sitting it should have mixed quit well. (I know for a fact that it was mixed well):ban: :ban:
 
NoClueBrewery said:
We took the sample (originally) after we mixed everything together and before we added the yeast.... I'm pretty sure we mixed it all together sufficiently but i may be wrong...
Click to expand...

Not to mean, but you are wrong. Listen, there's no possible way your O.G. was that high. Yooper has plugged your recipe into some software and the highest possible your O.G. could be is 1.059.
 
OK, well, we all told you it's not possible because there is a set amount of sugar in there, and you can't get more sugars than you have in the extract.

But 7 pounds of DME and 3.3 pounds of LME is alot of malt- that's more than you guys said. You could get to 1.085 with that recipe. I hope you added enough hops! And that could explain why you finished at 1.020 (which is kind of high for most wheat beers) because your yeast would be all done. That gives you 8.5% ABV. Your yeast is probably pretty pooped out, though, and you may not be able to bottle carbonate this batch. Are you kegging it? I doubt your actual recipe called for 7 pounds DME along with the LME, but you might want to tell your brewing partner your recipe!

Whatever it is- congrats on the batch! I'm sure it'll be a great one to drink! :mug:
 
ya i got 8.7 abv... we are not set up for kegging as of yet... hopefully we can bottle carbonate this one...

It actually tasted really good 2nite... We were expecting the flavor of horse vomit, but it was quite nice... obviously quite flat and a little warm (67 degrees F) but great flavor...


add your A/s/l to your sig and maybe I'll stop calling you a he ...
 
cant see you through your helmet... saw a buncha women in your pictures tho... which one are you?
 
OK, well, we all told you it's not possible because there is a set amount of sugar in there
Click to expand...

Reminded me of the movie My Cousin Vinny :
"I guess the laws of physics cease to exist on top of your stove."

Rick
 
NoClueBrewMaster said:
Ok, so this is Tony and I am one of the no clue brewers.

We boiled 2 gallons of water, took off heat, and added DME/LME

Brought it back to a boil for 45 minutes

Added hot wort to 3 gallons of cold water in Carboy. On this batch, we didnt cool the wort down fast enough, and had to wait about 5-6 hours til we could pitch.
Click to expand...


This might play a large role in your results. Instead of filling to a 5 gallon mark, you added 3 gallons to your boiled wort. What starts as 2 gallons does not remain as 2 gallons after an hour of boiling. Hard to say how much boiled off, but it would definitely skew your gravity expectations.
 
Also, I wouldn't mix the hot wort with the cold water in the carboy. To me, that is just asking for a broken carboy. I would suggest first cooling the wort down with a wort chiller or in the brew pot with an ice bath before adding it to the carboy. Less chance for thermal shock and a broken carboy.

Just my 2 cents.;)
 
Here's my theory: I'm guessing you didn't fill the tube all the way up and the hydrometer was resting on the bottom, thus the high reading. Anyway, that's my story for now...........
 
If the %alcohol is really that high in a wheat beer, you should have a pretty noticable alcohol hotness on your tongue, and it shouldn't take too long to get plastered off them.
 
Ok-

First, the carboy was topped off to 5 gallons after the addition of the wort

Second- I'm not retarded... The hydrometer flask was full and the hydrometer was floating.

Third- The malt extract was hopped LME. I believe it was 1 oz cascade.

Read the full thread before hopping on the wagon.

Thanks to all of you that did post on this thread. We have a nice immersion chiller once all the snow melts up here... The second batch we did "Barehill Blueberry" was chilled and with the addition of the chilled wort to our primary, we hit 78 degrees F once we aerated and mixed.

In the end this is all in good fun. We were just as surprised with our hydrometer readings as most of you were, which is why we are trying to make sense of our readings.
 
NoClueBrewMaster said:
Ok-



Second- I'm not retarded... The hydrometer flask was full and the hydrometer was floating.


Read the full thread before hopping on the wagon.
Click to expand...

I never said you were retarded, and I did read the whole thread, I've been following it since the beginning. I suggested a very plausible reason why you were getting a false reading on your hydrometer. People have made that mistake before, and will again. If you ask for help, and don't like the answers you get, well then I guess you can't be helped.
 
NoClueBrewMaster said:
Ok-

First, the carboy was topped off to 5 gallons after the addition of the wort

Second- I'm not retarded... The hydrometer flask was full and the hydrometer was floating.

Third- The malt extract was hopped LME. I believe it was 1 oz cascade.
Click to expand...

Oh, no one is calling you retarded or doubting your ability to brew! Please don't think that.

There is a "balance" in brewing, that requires hops to balance out the maltiness and sweetness in a beer, that's what I was referring to. A bigger beer requires more hops- if you add more malt to your recipe, you need to add more hops. So, I'd expect this beer to be sweet, that's all I was saying.

There are a "set" amount of sugars in extract, and you can't get a higher OG than is in your ingredients, that was my other point. Sometimes you get a skewed reading when you brew extracts because of temperature, or inadequate mixing, so extract brews are notoriously inaccurate in the OG. Your FG is correct, though, I'm sure.
 
NoClueBrewMaster said:
Ok-

First, the carboy was topped off to 5 gallons after the addition of the wort

Second- I'm not retarded... The hydrometer flask was full and the hydrometer was floating.

Third- The malt extract was hopped LME. I believe it was 1 oz cascade.

Read the full thread before hopping on the wagon.

Thanks to all of you that did post on this thread. We have a nice immersion chiller once all the snow melts up here... The second batch we did "Barehill Blueberry" was chilled and with the addition of the chilled wort to our primary, we hit 78 degrees F once we aerated and mixed.

In the end this is all in good fun. We were just as surprised with our hydrometer readings as most of you were, which is why we are trying to make sense of our readings.
Click to expand...

I'm always surprised at people who get mad when it's suggested that the OG reading had to be off. It's no knock on you or your procedure, it seems very hard to get an extract OG reading accurately, and why bother when you can just calculate it by plugging in the ingredients. I don't even take OGs anymore with extracts, I just let the software tell me what it should be and then take an FG. If the hydrometer was floating properly and is functioning correctly, then the sample wasn't mixed properly or it was read wrong (human error). If you're convinced that your sample was well-mixed, have you tried reading the hydro with 60 degree water to see if it reads 1.000?

The only other explanation is that you have some kind of super DME or you left the wort sitting under a beehive or something that dripped sugar into it...
 
Hahahahaha, this thread just keeps getting better and better. I love it.
I believe in the end of all this when we taste the brew we will figure out the real ABV. Maybe not the exact number but if it is really 13.52abv then we will sure taste it. If we dont taste something that blows our mouths up then I believe the real abv is between 5-8. Again I said we will see when we taste it. We did everything as we should of (I think) and we did taste a little sip yesturday (without priming sugar) and it tasted good. So in about 2-3 weeks myself and the others of No Clue Brewery will let you all know. Thanks again for all of your thoughts as they do help even if we still have No Clue!!!
 
As was noted, the most likely explanation was that the wort was not fully mixed after you added the top-off water. The concentrated wort (the boiled part) wants to sink to the bottom of the fermenter, the top-off water wants to stay on the top. You probably took your sample from the more-concentrated portion. We've all done this (or the reverse).

It's simply impossible to get the reading you noted given your ingredients and the batch size. There's a certain amount of sugars in the extract and a certain amount of water that you added, there's no physical way for there to be more sugars.

It has to be either a measurement issue, an equipment issue (did you check the hydrometer? The paper inside can get loose and give bad readings), or that the wort wasn't stirred properly.
 
Beat_Dead_Horse.jpg
 
Well it could have been any # of the things that you have all posted that gave us this reading...again...and I will say again...we (The No Clue Brewery) are all as shocked as you are. We are not saying that this is 100% fact and we are also AGAIN saying that we agree it could be wrong. I posted this thread to see what you all thought. I will last say that we will see when we drink it, and if it is true (the abv) then 3 beers should do the nights trick, if not then it will just be a great wheat as we wanted it to be.
 
Nobody's shocked, there's no way you have a 13% alcohol beer--

aw heck, just enjoy it and think whatever you want about the ABV, it sounds like your procedure was tight to have good beer.

Just call it "Wheat the F@$k" or "Wheat Do U Know" and claim it's "somewhere between 5 and 30 percent alcohol" and you'll be set.
 
I think you have picked suitable user names. ;)

Enjoy the beer but it is not 13%+ if your recipe is as stated.
It's not a case of trying to figure why you have a 13.52abv but finding what caused the error in your calculation.
 
jmiracle...Its called "WTF Wheat" but I love the idea of saying it between 5-30% abv...hahahaha that sounds great
 
This is getting pretty off topic, but coming from a psych background I can't help but think of the famous experiment about expectancy of alcohol-strength versus actual strength. To sum up, you get a lot more drunk if you expect to get drunk then if you don't.

I picture a little social experiment...take the same beer, label half of it as 5% and the other half as 10%, get a tasting group together and have them drink the same amount, and see if the 10% crowd is calling ex-girlfriends and telling you "who a good godd@mn ballplayer is" twice as quickly.
 
What does you hydrometer read in WATER and 60F?

And you absolutely do NOT have a 13% beer there. I'd est no more than 8% tops. I believe this is either a wonky hydrometer or an improper reading technique or unmixed wort.

ONLY way this could actually be a 13% beer is if you mistook the weight of the ingredients. IE you read metric and thought it was lbs. I doubt that cause I've never seen a 7 kilo bag of DME and it would weigh 15.3 lbs!

What yeast did you use? I'll enter that into the software and get you a reasonable A/V %.

I suggest purchasing beersmith. It's a great tool.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

micraftbeer
Using pH Meter Continually While Adding Alkaline Cleaner
Replies
0
Views
352
micraftbeer
micraftbeer
rodwha
Hops for Honey Wheat
Replies
9
Views
366
rodwha
rodwha
B
Moving from Primary to Secondary?
Replies
10
Views
601
mac_1103
mac_1103
B
Amber Ale with flavor gaps??
Replies
10
Views
1K
Miraculix
Miraculix
B
ABV
Replies
15
Views
719
redrocker652002
R

Latest posts

Back
Top