Overfermented Porter Fix?

[Koach]

I'm a sophomore all-grain brewer. Been at it for a little over a year and have 3 solo brews and 6 collaboration brews under my belt. I have a fridge in my garage w/ a temperature cut-off gauge for fermentation. I fermented this batch at 67 degrees, and lowered to 65 degrees after a week.

My most recent brew is 11 gallons of a Porter (grain bill & recipe details below). OG was 1.063 and projected final gravity was 1.013. A week later my gravity reading was 1.0095. Another week later it's a flat 1.009; it's really too low for the style. It doesn't have much mouthfeel at all, and with less sweetness, the roast is more than I was hoping for. I know my mash temperature stayed a steady 150 degrees, and the batch doesn't seem contaminated. I'm thinking honey may be a fix (for the sweetness portion anyway, even if it doesn't get the gravity back in range). Any ideas as to what I may have done wrong or more importantly, how to fix it?

Yeast was WLP001. The 10 gal version is below (I scaled it up to make 11)
Qty
Grain/Extracts (lbs.)
Domestic 2-row Pale Malted Barley 18
Carafa 0.5
Medium Cystal 1.25
Cara Munich 0.5
Chocolate 2.5
wheat 1
Special B 1
Black Patent + Roast (0.25 + 0.25) 0.5

dark malts added after 30 minutes in mash, black patent and roast added 4 minutes before the end of the mash. Temperature stayed a fairly steady 150 degrees throughout.

 

[eastoak]

honey will not help the sweetness, it will dry it out even more. you could try malto dextrin to get the body up but i would dump and brew again. not a popular bit of advice but you can't make a silk purse....

 

[Golddiggie]

You could try adding some lactose to the batch and see what that does. Lactose won't ferment out like honey (or other fermenable sugars)...

I've never used lactose in any of my brews. Mostly due to not brewing any recipes that call for it, or any styles that could use it.

I would also confirm the accuracy of your thermometer. There's no way you should be fermenting that far if the temperature was 150F.

 

[highgravitybacon]

Do you bottle or keg? If you bottle, you could add the maltodextrin or some lactose, backsweeten with sugar. Bottle condition, then pasteurize the bottles when the sweetness and carbonation are just right. That's going to be a lot of pasteurizing unless you have big bottles.

If you keg, you could add a campden tablet and potassium sorbate to kill the existing yeast then add sugar or dextrin and carbonate.

 

[Koach]

Maybe I didn't stir well enough and there were pockets of lower temperature. But everywhere I stuck the gauge in, I got readings between 149 and 151. I hadn't had temperature problems before, but I'll definitely check the thermometer and test it tomorrow.

I keg condition, so that camden option doesn't sound too bad. I can get some from a friend who likes to make lambics and meads. That sounds like it might have a shot.

The taste isn't bad, but I prefer chocolatey tones in my porters to coffee notes. With there being less sweetness, the roast sticks out more. But for the lack of mouthfeel, it tastes like a decent roasty porter ... just not what I set out to make.

Thanks for the replies.

 

[Golddiggie]

Adding lactose will increase the FG (it won't ferment). How much I can't say (see previous post). Even if your thermometer was accurate (or accurate enough) in previous batches, it might not be now. I would also change the batteries (if it's digital) after the initial test to see what you get for results.

 

[Koach]

Not digital, but it is a fairly new large dial thermometer with a long stem. The thermometers on my brewkegs need to be removed and re-calibrated.

 

[Golddiggie]

Not digital, but it is a fairly new large dial thermometer with a long stem. The thermometers on my brewkegs need to be removed and re-calibrated.

With bi-metal (dial) thermometers, you need to check them often. IMO, they're too unreliable for this use. Cheap digital ones can have similar symptoms (different causes but still same end result). You could get a lab grade liquid thermometer to check them against. Just be sure to check in the mash range, not just at freezing and boiling.

 

[Komodo]

Don't dump it! It drives me nuts when people say that.
Use some dextrine malt for body. Also, go get some pale chocolate malt, and steep it for 45 mins or so at 150-160. It's VERY chocolatey with very little roast. Grind it and stick your nose in the sack and you'll see what I mean.

Oh, and some medium L crystal malts for sweetness.

 

[dcp27]

like others mentioned, lactose or malto-dextrin aren't fermentable by sacc and will add some body back (1lb of either adds about 9pts/5gals). don't waste your time with campden since you're kegging, the cold will keep the yeast at bay so if you want to backsweeten with something else (like the honey you mentioned), just add it when its in your kegerator.

 

[techbrewie]

yeah dont ever dump perfectly good beer. even if it's not perfect or even not great it's still 11 gallons of the worlds greatest beverage. besides with a keg backsweetening is easy. 1 campden tab and 1/4 tsp potassium sorbate per gallon, let it sit for 24 hours, then backsweeten with whatever you want in the keg. be sure to keep it cold though.

 

[Golddiggie]

Yeah, kegging does make it much easier. Use a sugar source that will compliment the beer if you can. You can pull small samples to see what to use. You could also wait for it to carbonate to see how far you actually need to go. Would really suck to go too far with this, but only finding out when you go to pour a pint.

 

[david_42]

Lactose for sweetness and maltodextrin for mouth feel. Try 8 oz of each.

 

[Koach]

like others mentioned, lactose or malto-dextrin aren't fermentable by sacc and will add some body back (1lb of either adds about 9pts/5gals). don't waste your time with campden since you're kegging, the cold will keep the yeast at bay so if you want to backsweeten with something else (like the honey you mentioned), just add it when its in your kegerator.

What kind of time frame will I have on this beer before even the trace yeast left start to work on that sugar and incrementally take them down over time?

Also - with putting the malts back in the beer, are you recommending steeping them in a hop bag in the keg?

 

[Koach]

Yeah, kegging does make it much easier. Use a sugar source that will compliment the beer if you can. You can pull small samples to see what to use. You could also wait for it to carbonate to see how far you actually need to go. Would really suck to go too far with this, but only finding out when you go to pour a pint.

Yeah, my original hope was to put some bourbon in this keg Christas eve, force-carbonate, and have a couple of growlers worth of semi-green bourbon porter to share with the family on Christmas day, and let the rest age appropriately. That isn't going to happen now. I'm thinking that letting it sit with the yeast to clean up a couple of weeks longer (since the beer is shy of 3 weeks old) and then either nuking the yeast and going forward with dextrose and sweetener or proceeding without said nuking. That idea of steeping more grain is totally intruiging. I'm only 4 points short.

That said I don't want it to taste like a portered version of milk stout, either. I really appreciate all the feedback.

 

[cheezydemon3]

I would LEAVE IT.....

Carb it and drink it. If there is something to improve, do it for the next batch.

 

[eastoak]

I would LEAVE IT.....

Carb it and drink it. If there is something to improve, do it for the next batch.

the next best thing to dumping it is leaving it alone. all of the grain steeping, reheating, back sweetening is just a shot in the dark. what do you do if it's still not right, more of the same? is the goal just a beer you can tolerate and avoid dumping? it's beer, not gold. getting better at brewing beer involves mistakes and learning from them. if you tinker with the beer before it's even carbed you will have no way of knowing what went wrong, or right, in the brewing process since whatever the fix was will get in the way of what you originally had in the first place. many here are philosophically opposed to doing anything other than drinking every beer they brew no matter what, that's fine it doesn't "drive me nuts" but i'd rather only drink the best beer i make.