Beer tastes like DME

[ryansullivan]

A few months ago, I tried to make John Palmer's Fightin' Urak-Hai Barleywine. My mash was apparently incredibly inefficient, and I only got an OG of ~1.050 instead of the expected ~1.100.

In a desperate attempt to fix the gravity, I added 5 pounds of amber DME, which I couldn't add until the height of primary fermentation (this made a giant foamy mess all over my floor by the way, so I don't recommend trying it).

Anyway, after aging it for almost 2 months, I finally kegged it and sampled it. It is strong and has a slight whiskey taste from some oak cubes I added, but it overwhelmingly tastes like DME. The FG upon kegging was 1.022, which was not decreasing anymore.

Can this be fixed? Did I add too much DME too late? Should I try pitching more yeast?

 

[TyTanium]

Malty, eh? 1022 isn't bad for a barleywine. What were your hop additions & estimated IBUs?

You could dry hop at this point, might be nice.

 

[SenorPepe]

I've added late DME a few times and haven't had any problems of it tasting like DME

 

[Grumpybumpy]

Did you boil the dme?

 

[ryansullivan]

The hops were:

3 oz Columbus (10%) for 60 minutes
3 oz Nugget (12%) for 30 minutes
1 oz Columbus (10%) for 15 minutes

It should have been about 106 IBUs.

I did not boil the DME, I just added it straight to the fermenter.

 

[Raenon]

I did not boil the DME, I just added it straight to the fermenter.

 

[Revvy]

Yeah, you should have boiled it, maybe in a half gallon of water. More than likely the yeast had a difficult time eating it in crystalized form....A lot of it's probably just kinda floating around in there, or sitting at the bottom.

I haven't a clue how to fix this.

Maybe pitch some dregs from Orval or jolly pumpkin, something sour for some funk. Or maybe Oak and Bourbon for a couple weeks then rack it from under the oak and let it mellow some more.

 

[SenorPepe]

Oh OK I don't know then. It has always worked for me to pasteurize or boil the DME and add it during fermentation, but I don't know about dumping it in.

 

[ryansullivan]

Yeah I was going to boil it, but when I bought the DME at my LHBS, the guy recommended just putting it straight in. In the end, there wasn't much sitting at the bottom of the fermenter though, so it seems like it was eaten up. The fermentation went strong for a long time too, the airlock was still bubbling about a month in.

 

[Grumpybumpy]

Ehhhh, I still think the problem is that you didn't boil it. I've never added dme that late before, but I've added boiled sugar to dry a saison out. maybe you could give the contents a swirl and see if fermentation kicks in again?

Edit: or warm it up? Or add boiled priming sugar to wake the yeast up with simple sugars? Or just leave it alone a year to see if it improves?

 

[ryansullivan]

Does anyone see a problem with re-boiling the beer and pitching another packet of yeast? I'm thinking this might break down the DME that the yeast was having trouble eating.

 

[afr0byte]

Don't do that! The boiling would drive off a large portion of the alcohol, for one. Who knows what other bad things it'd do.

 

[wildwest450]

Does anyone see a problem with re-boiling the beer and pitching another packet of yeast? I'm thinking this might break down the DME that the yeast was having trouble eating.

This wins post of the year.

 

[Kate00]

This wins post of the year.

come on now, be nice. the purpose of the forum is to be helpful.

 

[LarMoeCur]

Does anyone see a problem with re-boiling the beer and pitching another packet of yeast? I'm thinking this might break down the DME that the yeast was having trouble eating.

Do not reboil! Just drink it and caulk it up to lessons learned.

 

[hamaien]

Does anyone see a problem with re-boiling the beer and pitching another packet of yeast? I'm thinking this might break down the DME that the yeast was having trouble eating.

I've heard of people doing sours this way. Pitch your sour yeast in the beginning, sample it daily until you have the level of sourness you want, then boil it to kill the sour yeast, cool it, and pitch your regular yeast. I haven't personally tried any sours made this way though so I don't know how good they come out.

 

[brooksy]

I've heard of people doing sours this way. Pitch your sour yeast in the beginning, sample it daily until you have the level of sourness you want, then boil it to kill the sour yeast, cool it, and pitch your regular yeast. I haven't personally tried any sours made this way though so I don't know how good they come out.

I think you might be mistaken. What I've heard that what people do is ferment a small portion of beer with the sour culture (say a few liters), and ferment the main (say 5 gallon portion) with yeast. Then when they want to blend they pasteurize (boil) only the small portion of soured beer to kill the culture and then add it to the main beer to taste. I think that you would regret boiling your partially fermented batch, at this point I think it would be less work just to re-brew, or choke down the DME flavored goodness! I think I need to use parentheses one more time (like this)... There we go (woo hoo).

 

[afr0byte]

I think you might be mistaken. What I've heard that what people do is ferment a small portion of beer with the sour culture (say a few liters), and ferment the main (say 5 gallon portion) with yeast. Then when they want to blend they pasteurize (boil) only the small portion of soured beer to kill the culture and then add it to the main beer to taste. I think that you would regret boiling your partially fermented batch, at this point I think it would be less work just to re-brew, or choke down the DME flavored goodness!

Pasteurizing doesn't require boiling. They'd just have to raise the temperature up to ~150 for about 30 minutes. This is still below the boiling point of alcohol, so it wouldn't boil off any alcohol.

 

[brooksy]

Good point, I was on a parentheses kick. But I still don't think it would be wise to boil a batch after is been fermenting, unless your a beer ninja and can get away with crap like that.

 

[paganknight]

or if is too bad to drink destill off the alcahol and save it for the next batch that might need a bit of a kick

 

[beerman0001]

So for this Barleywine you had an og of 1.050 added 5# dme for an og of about 1.100 and a fg of 1.022 for an abv of around 10.4%? Seems to me that you are trying this beer way too young barleywine takes around a year to come into their own.

 

[Beerfly]

Trying to learn from this thread as well. My question is the 5 LBS of DME added, isn't that considered excessive for a late addition? Is there a limit on the amount or is it solely determined by SG?

 

[beerman0001]

You can use as much as you need to hit the og you where trying for. Would have been best to put in at the end of the boil.

 

[ryansullivan]

So for this Barleywine you had an og of 1.050 added 5# dme for an og of about 1.100 and a fg of 1.022 for an abv of around 10.4%? Seems to me that you are trying this beer way too young barleywine takes around a year to come into their own.

Thanks for the advice. I'm going to age this for a while and see if the flavor changes.