Strong Alcohol Taste.

I just made a milk stout with chocolate the OG was 1.090 I know that is really high I got it down to 1.030 in the primary using wyeast london ale with no starter I tasted it and it tasted great but I was still worried that it didn't ferment out completely so I moved it to the secondary and repitched it with safale us 05 and I also put cacao nibs and vanilla beans that were soaked in good vodka for a few days. It was probably close to about 2 oz I don't think it was more then 3 oz of vodka. I just tested the gravity after about a week in the secondary and got 1.024. and it taste like rubbing alcohol and tasted nothing like when I tried it before the secondary. this was suppose to be a 3 gallon batch but ended up with only 1.5 gallons of beer. Did the vodka cause this bad taste or was it the second fermentation? I know it is going to have to age for a very long time to mellow out but should I leave it in the secondary for longer then a week to help with aging or should I bottle it now and let it age in the bottle? Also I forgot to mention fermentation temps were steady at 68 the whole time just the past few days it went up to 70.

You 68 degree fermentation temperature might have contributed to it having some fusel alcohols, or perhaps it was your lack of starter when pitching into a 1.090 wort. When did you first pitch? I'd let it bulk age for a bit longer, though you might end up over-extracting the cocoa and vanilla flavors, so keep that in mind.

It sat in the primary for 21 days and been in the secondary for about a week.
Is 68 too high to ferment at? I tasted awesome before racked to secondary so I dont think it was the temperature that caused the bad taste.

Your London Ale yeast has a 73-77% attenuation rate. 73-77% of 1.09 is 1.024-1.021, so you're 1.024 final gravity is right on.

What was your grain bill? It doesn't sound like your issue is in your fermentation, and 3 oz of vodka wouldn't be significant in 1.5 gallons of wort.

What I'm thinking is you don't have enough balance in your original recipe in the body of the beer, i.e., you have too many highly fermentable sugars (did you add sugar, honey, etc.?) and not enough more complex converted sugars from your grain/extract to add enough body to cover the alcohol content.

Could you list your original recipe?

I pretty much followed the left hand milk stout recipe I took the 5 gallon recipe divided it by five then multiplied it by 3 to get a three gallon recipe but I also added .5 lbs of corn sugar and .5 of DME to try to boost the ABV a little and also added Cocoa power about 12 oz of that. The wyeast didnt bring it down to 1.024 it only brought it down to 1.030 then the safale us 05 finished the job and got it down to 1.024. So you guys think I should leave it in the secondary longer to age like how long? Would dry hopping help even it out?

I also added .5 lbs of corn sugar and .5 of DME to try to boost the ABV

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There's your strong alcohol taste! In a 1.5 gallon batch, that's a full 0.03 gravity points of pure grain alcohol. You added almost 50% extra alcohol your recipe didn't call for. The DME would have upped the body a bit, but the added corn sugar would not. You can't just arbitrarily add ABV without balancing it out with extra body. A recipe is a recipe for a reason. Adding ABV to a good recipe throws the balance out of wack.

Unfortunately, you can't condition out extra alcohol. The "burn" may mellow out a bit if you age it long ter. To really fix it, you are either going to have to drink it as is, or brew some more of this beer with a lower OG and blend the two brews.

Either way, learn your lesson, and follow the recipe without adding extra stuff. Adding extra ABV without scaling other ingredients appropriately is typically a BAD idea.

when you say fermentation temps were at 68F, was that ambient or wort temp? like keesh said, its likely from stressed yeast from too high of a temp and underpitching.

TopherM said:

What was your grain bill? It doesn't sound like your issue is in your fermentation, and 3 oz of vodka wouldn't be significant in 1.5 gallons of wort.

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3oz in 1.5gals is actually pretty substantial. that'd be about 10oz in a 5gal batch. for comparison, denny's vanilla bourbon porter uses about that amount

What I'm thinking is you don't have enough balance in your original recipe in the body of the beer, i.e., you have too many highly fermentable sugars

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its a milk stout at 1.024, i dont think lack of unfermentables is the issue

68 was the wort temp. I was aiming for a 1% increase in ABV and didnt realize it would affect it this much. It tasted awesome at 1.030 in the primary and that was at 7.2% ABV it had no alcohol taste then would it have been wise of me to just bottle it then I didnt because I was worried about bottle bombs. What should I do to bring that bad tasted down? Are you saying that aging wont help? I really dont want to make another batch with a low og and mix them what else could I try?

The alcohol burn will subside a bit with long term aging, like 6-8+ more weeks at room temp, but you really can't fix it without blending it at this point. I would see blending as a PITA myself, so I'd probably just bottle, put them in a dark closet, and forget about them for 2-3 months.

Im thinking I am going to bottle this weekend and let it sit 6+ months. Would aging in the secondary longer help it at all or would that just create more off flavors as it is sitting on yeast? Will dry hopping with some more hops help balance it out or not? Thanks for all your advice guys.

TopherM said:

The alcohol burn will subside a bit with long term aging, like 6-8+ more weeks at room temp, but you really can't fix it without blending it at this point. I would see blending as a PITA myself, so I'd probably just bottle, put them in a dark closet, and forget about them for 2-3 months.

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+1

This is a good answer!! Honestly. This one and the one you made about 'pure grain alcohol' from the dextrose.



I'd say when adding dextrose to give a bit of a bump at the minimum 2-parts dry-extract to 1-parts dextrose.