Mango Question

I have an IPA that I want to add Mangoes to. I used US-05 and my OG was 1.076 and Final Gravity is 1.010. That is an attenuation of 87%. My question is can this ferment anymore? That attenuation is very high and I would think that the yeast don't have much if anything left in the tank.

I am wondering if I add the mangoes if I have to worry about the sugars fermenting. I do not want this.

Your yeast attenuated your beer wort quite well, but instead of apparent attenuation, you should think more about gravity points and alcohol. Case in point, a beer that started at 1.010 and fermented to 1.000 would have 100% apparent attenuation but the yeast haven't done much work at all. Your beer attenuated 66 points. Many beers start at 1.120 and have no problem attenuating 90 points or more.

If you toss simple sugars in the form of fruit into your beer, unless you're way above the alcohol tolerance of the yeast, they'e going to go to work on it. Apart from filtering or stabilizing with yeast inhibitors, there's no way to stop them from doing it.

Can you post a link to your recipe?

How much of which crystal/cara malts did you add? -Any other specialty malts?
What was your basemalt(s)?
What temp did you mash at and for how long?


Why are you concerned about the yeast fermenting the mango sugar?

The sugars from the mangos WILL get fermented.
Mangos also add protelytic enzymes similar to papian and the enzyme may also degrade any protein left in solution slowly making the body / mouthfeel even more thin. -You could kill the enzyme with high temp but you'll probably boil off some of the nice mango flavor and probably set pectins so you'd then need a pectin enzyme if you don't want the beer to be cloudy...


Don't worry have a home brew, for sure; you can do whatever you want but if you already feel that the alcohol content is a bit high and the body/mouth feel a bit low on this one you might want to save the mango for a future brew instead. (And maybe mash a bit higher on that beer and use a lower attenuating English Ale yeast - you'd get some fruity notes from the yeast esters which might also go with the mango flavors quite nicely.)


My $0.02,
Adam

Well I based it on the extract centennial Blonde recipe
5 lb. extra light dry extract
1 lb. cara pils

except I did a partial boil and used these hops:
55 min - .25 Horizon
35 min - .25 Chinook
25 min - .25 oz. Horizon
20 min - .25 oz. Cascade
5 min - .25 oz. Cascade

Now I didn't have a scale to measure the fresh hops so I added way too much and it was more like an IPA. But I was thinking with such a low gravity I'm not going to get enough alcohol for my liking in this inadvertent IPA. So I added a couple things I had lying around to boost the ABV lol. A couple pounds of dextrose and about 4 ounces malto dextrine. Now it's got a pretty decent taste but not much body and I was thinking when I tried a sample the other day Mango would compliment it nicely. The reason I don't want it to ferment the mango is because I want to have a lot of Mango flavor. I just bought 20 lbs. of frozen mangoes and I plan to use them all. I might add as many as I can into the primary and then save the rest for a short secondary then keg and put in fridge to halt fermentation. My mash temp. was 153-155 for 45 minutes. Fermentation temp. was between 62 and 64 for 8 days then I put it up to 71.6 for 3 days. I don't really care if the alcohol gets up to 9 or 10 really but I do not want to lose the Mango flavor because I think it will really compliment this redheaded stepchild of a beer. Thanks for input so far.

DaBills said:

Well I based it on the extract centennial Blonde recipe
5 lb. extra light dry extract
1 lb. cara pils

except I did a partial boil and used these hops:
55 min - .25 Horizon
35 min - .25 Chinook
25 min - .25 oz. Horizon
20 min - .25 oz. Cascade
5 min - .25 oz. Cascade

Now I didn't have a scale to measure the fresh hops so I added way too much and it was more like an IPA. But I was thinking with such a low gravity I'm not going to get enough alcohol for my liking in this inadvertent IPA. So I added a couple things I had lying around to boost the ABV lol. A couple pounds of dextrose and about 4 ounces malto dextrine. Now it's got a pretty decent taste but not much body and I was thinking when I tried a sample the other day Mango would compliment it nicely. The reason I don't want it to ferment the mango is because I want to have a lot of Mango flavor. I just bought 20 lbs. of frozen mangoes and I plan to use them all. I might add as many as I can into the primary and then save the rest for a short secondary then keg and put in fridge to halt fermentation. My mash temp. was 153-155 for 45 minutes. Fermentation temp. was between 62 and 64 for 8 days then I put it up to 71.6 for 3 days. I don't really care if the alcohol gets up to 9 or 10 really but I do not want to lose the Mango flavor because I think it will really compliment this redheaded stepchild of a beer. Thanks for input so far.

Click to expand...

Now it all makes sense. This recipe is VERY, VERY fermentable and WILL make an extremely dry beer.

The reason is that the "Extra light" dry malt extract is actually a blend of the most pale dry malt extract and dextrose already. Carapils won't add much in the way of unfermentable sugars either. Then you added even more dextrose.

Brewing science used to think that dextrins were responsible for mouthfeel and increased viscosity in beer but its now proved that that is actually not the case but malto dextrine use still continues for some reason... Steeping some crystal malt probably would've helped a lot more. You've got something between a blonde ale and a belgian tripel as far as the fermentables go and it sounds like an IPA as far as the hop rate and I'm guessing yeast strain go.

The acids from the mangos will make it seem even drier, more tart, and will also increase the perception of bitterness in addition to raising the alcohol.

It sounds like a decent percentage of the fermentables are already very simple sugars; yeast can have a difficult time fermenting more complex sugars once it's been fed a diet that is high in glucose/dextrose but the mango sugars I'm guessing are a combination of fructose and sucrose which aren't too complex but I do still worry about it. I also worry about that protein degrading enzyme in a beer this dry already but knock yourself out.

And not to be overly pedantic, but you actually didn't have a mash temp with this one - steeping crystal/cara malts doesn't use any enzymes in the process so it's technically not mashing but steeping. (I didn't realize it was an extract recipe when I asked the question; if you were doing a full mash, the mash temp determines the fermentability of the wort and with such a low FG I was expecting you to say that you mashed at a pretty low temp (60-64C).)


Adam

You are very knowledgeable. How long have you been doing this? I just started as you might have noticed. So what would you do in this situation? Skip the mangoes? Add some for flavor and crash to inhibit yeast? Or will the acid from mangoes make it undrinkable. The beer isn't half bad right now just a little light bodied.

Not for nothing, but I made a watermellon wheat over the summer. I added the watermellon (pureed in the blender first) after pasteurizing it (direction can be found online) to the primary fermentation. Sure, the watermellon fermented, but what I was left with was a very nice and mild flavor of the fruit. Those sugars will up your final alcohol, but if you like, you can calculate to a degree of accuracy how many sugars the mango will add to your beer and cut back on the malt. Honestly, with just 5lbs of extract, I don't see you getting an intolerable amount of alcohol at the end, and besides, IPAs can be on the higher end of that. My girlfriend's brother used a lot of fruit in his beers and he had an easy method--just throw it all in there and see what happens!

Good luck to you!