simple sugar added late in fermentation

My plan was to add some cane sugar to my tripel 3 days after the start of fermentation to help dry it out. well now Im racking off to a "secondary" on day 14 and I never got around to adding the sugar? should I add it now?

Does it taste dry enough? The sugar will ferment. Unless someone else has a reason, I don't see why it would be bad.

You don't have to rack to secondary right away.....Heck many of us don't use secondaries at all...I just did a belgian strong with 3 pounds of invert sugar added...the first at boil, a week later after the first krauzen fell, and week after that when THAT krausen fell...then I left it alone for another 2 weeks and bottled it...it was beautifully clear and packed a punch..it will be awesome in 5 or 6 months...

Evenif you still want to secondary this...add the sugar now and wait another week or 10 days when that krauzen falls, THEN rack to secondary...

You don't have to impose your calendar on a beer, then get stuck if you missed something...just adjust your schedule...it doens't hurt the beer.

Im brewing a dark strong tomorrow and using the yeast from tripel.

Well you could try adding it to the secondary and leave it for a long secondary since it will actually be a true "secondary fermentation."

I googled and there's not much mention of adding sugar to the secondary, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't work....

If I were going to do that, I would run the my autosiphon back and forth along the bottom of the fermenter a couple times to make sure I picked up plenty of the yeast to eat the sugar...you'll know if it worked, if you get a krauzen in the secondary in the next couple days....

Then I would make sure to leave the beer alone for at least 3 weeks in the secondary to let everything drop out and clear.

I was thinking I would ferment at 70 or 75 until the second krausen falls then drop it to 50 for 2-3 weeks. Do you think I would have to add yeast to bottle condition?

killian said:

Im brewing a dark strong tomorrow and using the yeast from tripel.

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I don't harvest yeast from that strong beers, the risk of yeast damage is too high.

killian said:

I was thinking I would ferment at 70 or 75 until the second krausen falls then drop it to 50 for 2-3 weeks. Do you think I would have to add yeast to bottle condition?

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If it's only 2-3 weeks after there should still be enough sugar left over to carb...if you were going to bulk age for months that's probably a different story.

Piotr said:

I don't harvest yeast from that strong beers, the risk of yeast damage is too high.

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the O.G was 1.062 so the gravity was higher than ideal but not really extremely high.

killian said:

the O.G was 1.062 so the gravity was higher than ideal but not really extremely high.

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Yeah, I think it will do, those yeast are pretty alkohol tolerant. Quite a small tripel it is

2.5 lbs should take it up to 1.070, Im thinking it will be about 7.5 to 8% abv so its really not that small.