High Gravity Hell

So I decided to brew my first winter warmer. The good news is that I drastically improved my effeciency during this brew, the bad knews is that instead of a 1.071 gravity I ended with a 1.082.

I used a Wyeast London Ale yeast that has an alcohol tolerence of up to 10%. I dont yet have my FG but I dont expect it to exceed that.

My real questions are how long you should do a secondary conditioning for with a brew of this size and how long should you bottle condition for? Opinions seem to vary quite a bit, just looking for some general reccomendations as I want planning on getting htis big of a beer.

The Chimay Blue clone I brewed yesterday (Sunday) came in at 1.085. I plan on leaving in the primary for a month, secondary a month and probably leave in the bottles at least 4-6 months before I crack one open (Doubt if that'll happen.....but I'll try to hold out.)

You can always add some RO or deionized water to it to drop the SG.

As far as time, I did a 1.080 winter warmer (Ye Olde Tyme Holiday Ale) that I gave 4 weeks. It was in my conical, so I dropped the trub after 1 week (gravity had dropped to ~1.020) and then let it sit for another three weeks (similar to racking to secondary). I bottled on 10/24 after 4 weeks (gravity 1.018), conditioning until at least Thanksgiving (11/16) - 4 weeks. I plan to set some bottles aside for long-term aging, give some away for Christmas, and drink the heck out of some over this rainy season.

Hm, not a bad idea about diluting a tad. However, at what point is it too late to dilute. Would you want to dilute beer after its done with its primary fermentation? I havent done any research but it goes against my intuition.

Secondly, would diluting it decrease the time needed to condition in secondary or the bottle?

The only time I've added water, I did it a few hours after cooling and pitching yeast, on brew day. But I'll bet you could add it later in the process, as long as you were careful about not causing too many bubbles when you pour it in, so as to decrease aeration. If you keg, you could put it in the keg before you rack the beer to the keg. If bottling, just dissolve your priming sugar into the whole gallon (or whatever quantity you decide you need to use to hit your expected FG).

There will be some change in the hop/malt balance by adding water that wasn't present in the boil. The concentration of hops to liquid does affect the isomerization of the hop oils during the boil, but the math to calculate out how much that would change is just too difficult for my brain to give you an answer. I doubt that you'd notice half a gallon or so in a 5-gallon batch, with such a huge OG, but it may take a gallon or more to dilute it to the value you expected.

For example - I just brewed a batch that I expected to be 5.5gal at 1.057SG post-boil. I did a 90-min boil, and I ended up pouring only 4.5gal into the fermenter at 1.063. So I added a gallon of distilled water, which brought it to 5.5gal at 1.060. Obviously that was still higher than my expected SG, but I didn't add more water to bring it down to 1.057, because I was OK with the higher gravity (it's a Marzen recipe). Depending on what attenuation I get from the yeast, I may add a bit more water into the keg before lagering...

not a big deal, you are barely 10 points higher on the gravity than you expected. just do what you were going to do if it was lower. personally, i almost always primary for 3 weeks, then secondary for one week. bottle conditioning- 3 weeks for tasty and 5-6 for really good. its not significantly higher than what you were expecting.

Thanks for the input. I don't think I'll try and dilute it seems like that should have been done earlier and I just hate diluted beer, I feel like I can almost always taste it.

I'm thinking I"ll check the gravity after a week in primary, if its done dropping I'll switch to secondary for maybe 2-3 weeks. I've never done a secondary that long but I think batch conditioning is better than bottle conditioning. That'll give it 3 weeks before christmas.

I was just hearing a lot of guys doing secondary for a month and then bottling for several months.

cool. do your thing, enjoy. i would say though that a longer time in primary is more important than a longer time in secondary. if you let the beer sit on the yeast cake for 2-3 weeks, the yeast is actively cleaning up sediment and clearing the beer. you would most likely get clearer beer with a longer primary than secondary. lots of people onyl like to do secondary if its a beer that has to be dry hopped, otherwise they may just do a 4 week primary then go right to bottles. just my two cents.. a good firend of mine just dry hops in primary from weeks 3-4,k then goes right into his keg. i'll be trying that method with 2 beers i have in primary right now..

I think I am in the same boat, I didn't do my Christmas beer early enough and will end up being next years Christmas beer.

I brewed it on 10/11 and ended up with a OG of 1.084, it is down to somewhere in the 1.011-1.015 range making it over 9%. I plan on bottling the whole batch so I can store it for later, not sure if it will be that good at Christmas after only 2.5 months.

I also brewed a 1.120 beer Saturday that will be for next winter too.

Don't dilute it. That throws the whole beer out of whack. Go with what you have, figure out what you did, and learn for the next batch.


TL

Well, I guess that brings back to the ol' primary vs. secondary debate. Which is better to do longer to produce a more rounded out smoother beer when dealing with high alcohol?

Actually, I'd look at bulk aging in a pressurized keg rather than a secondary, which will help you avoid any oxidation issues that could arise in secondary. Say if you were to leave it in a keg until October/November 2010, you could then blow the sediment out with the first pull from the keg, and then use a beer gun to fill bottles for serving and gifting. These bottles will be clear and sediment-free, which is a lovely presentation!