My yeast is a Beast

[beerstudent]

I brewed what I interpret a Belgian Barlywine a month ago. The OG was about 1.122. I started off with Scotch Ale yeast, and then five days later I dumped in WLP099. Holly crap that yeast is strong. I did have a substantial amount of table sugar, brown sugar and molasses. I checked the gravity last night and it was 1.000. Yes, I drank the sample and it was pretty darn good. It was close to Avery's the Beast. Has anyone here ever heard of beer fermenting all the way down to 1.000? It's in the secondary with wood chips. In a month (by taste) or so I'll rack to tertiary and sit until march-april before bottling, and then condition in bottle for 6 months. I don't know what happened, but my estimated FG was 1.030. Anyone have any idea what happened?

 

[kanzimonson]

Holy diarrhea. We're gonna need a recipe on that one. I'm guessing you added like 3# of sugar? I could see how the extra alcohol would give an apparent attenuation of 100%.

 

[scrambledegg81]

Woof. Mind sending me a vial or two of that yeast cake?

 

[bknifefight]

Are you sure you read your hydrometer right? If so, we'll have to see a recipe. I don't see why you would want such a thin barley wine. If it's truely at 1.000, then you have a 16.3% ABV beer.

 

[beerstudent]

Darn. I didn't want to have to cough up any embarrassing details. I initially was going for a 3 gallon batch of english barleywine with an OG of 1.150 (all-grain). When I took the initial gravity reading it was a little over 1.050 (I just rounded down, and yes, I did the iodine conversion test). Somehow I mega goofed up. To somehow salvage the brew, I added a substantial amount of fermentables over the next week and a half: 3 lbs pilsner dried malt extract, 3 lbs amber dried malt extract, 2 lbs table sugar, 1 lb brown sugar, and 8 ounces of molasses. The volume has increased to five gallons. It actually is pretty good at this point. There is also no hop character at all since it was supposed to be an english barleywine and the batch sized increased 40%. It certainly tastes like it could be 16% alcohol. A week ago it tasted like someone punched me in the mouth, but now it's totally different. I was hoping I could get some good feedback without spilling the beans.

 

[kanzimonson]

I think you'll need to go through very carefully and do the math with each step, because if your volume increased, then you essentially diluted your wort. Obviously the sugar additions raised the gravity, so you have this back and forth thing going.

Remember, when they say table sugar is 42pppg, that means 1 pound within 1 gallon, not 1 pound added to 1 gallon.

 

[kanzimonson]

Okay, I was too curious so I had to do the math myself. Here's what I'm estimating for your "virtual" OG:

3 gallons x 1.050 = 150GU
6# DME x 42pppg = 252GU
3# sugar x 42pppg = 126GU
8oz molasses x 36pppg = 18GU (I just estimated the PPPG)
TOTAL GRAVITY UNITS = 546

If you have exactly five gallons, your virtual OG was ((546/5)/1000 + 1) or 1.109

Still, it's pretty crazy your apparent attenuation is still 100%. That means it's about 15%.

Any other shenanigans we should know about?

 

[beerstudent]

I was punching in the data off the top of my head. I might have forgotten some sugar. On beer calculus it came out to 1.120. I didn't know how to account for the grain portion of the bill, so I entered it as DME until the OG for 3.5 gallons of beer was 1.050 (half gallon for waste). I then added everything that I added (boiled in water). I also agitated the yeast every after every addition to keep the yeast in suspension. I added 2 oz of medium toast american oak chips in the secondary. Half soaked in port and half soaked in Jack Daniel's Single Barrel for 2 weeks. How long should I wait before racking off? I eventually will have to go by taste, but I don't want to take sample ten weeks in a row either.