too sweet tripel

We just brewed a strong tripel that tasted way too sweet after primary fermentation. We transferred it to secondary to see if it settled down a bit but so far it has not. Here is the recipe we used:

30# US 2-row Pale Malt
1.5# Aromatic
1# Biscuit
3# Raw turbinado (sugar in the raw from the local grocery store)
3oz styrian 90 min boil
.5oz tett 15 min
.5oz hallertauer Hers 15 min
1oz saaz 5 min

We did a ten gallon batch that had a starting gravity of 1.106 and we pitched a Wyeast #3787 Trappist high gravity that I made a starter for the 4 days coming up to the brew day. After a 15 day primary it yielded a gravity of 1.030.

My question is how can I bring down the sweetness? Tips? techniques? I think maybe it was a bit too much sugar? wrong kind of sugar? bad yeast strain?

Thanks in advance.

 

Simple sugars are used to dry out the beer and make it "digestible." I'm happy with 2 lbs sucrose in a 5 gallon batch with a ~1.083 OG.

Hopping seems WAY low. My current batch is 63 IBU by Rager and it's just right. I'd brew up a couple gallons of a super bitter wort and use it to kraeusen the kegs or something.

 

What he said.
Sugar dries out the beer, and 15-20% of the gravity from sugar is the norm.
Not sure how large a batch, but presuming 10gal.
Also, we need more detail on mash temperature, fermentation temp, oxygenation, etc. as well.
The hopping does seem low for that high an OG beer, too.

 

Is 3# of sugar not enough? Seems plenty to me

And considering the BJCP range of IBUs in a belgian tripel is 20-40, his hop schedule seems completely appropriate

 

3787 can be really slow. Give it another week (or three) and raise the temperature to the mid 70s if it's not there yet. It not be stalled, it may just be slower than a fat girl playing dodgeball.

With 32 lbs of grain, I would go for more like 5 pounds. Duvel (not a tripel, I know, but similar) uses 17% corn sugar to get that dry finish.

 

After you play the wait-and-see game, and if the gravity is still high, do a "forced fermentation test" to see if the issue is with the wort or the yeast. Search it here and you'll be good to go.

 

Give it more time, at least 4-6 weeks, maybe longer, to finish. Belgian yeasts can sometimes take a lot longer than you think. I brew Belgians a lot and have gotten to the point where I don't even check then until 6 weeks.

That is a pretty big beer. 3787 does just chug along but will continue to work for a long time. You may want to consider bringing the temp up to help the yeast finish up.

The sugar is fine. I have used Turbinado several times and it has fermented out great. Most Belgian beers use 10-20% of the fermentables as sugar.

Here is a good quote from Brew Like a Monk....

"Let the fermentation finish, perhaps at a higher temperature. It may take as long to get the last few points of attenuation as it did for the first 80%."

Belgian yeasts will attenuate well but may often take some time to do it.

If you have an interest in brewing Belgian beers, definitely pick up a copy of Brew Like a Monk. I have learned a lot from the book about brewing Belgian beers.

 

We brewed this batch on Nov 5th. We mashed at about 151* for 90 minutes. Boiled 13.5 gallons down to around 10 over a 90 minute boil period. Cooled it and put it into two different 5 gal glass carboys (My next purchase is to get a bigger fermenter so I don't have to split a batch), pitched the starter, put it into my friend's office (brew at his house and its warmer in the office than the basement). Fermentation went nuts for about a week or more then died down drastically. after 15 days in primary we transferred it to a secondary (mixed the batches) but left the sediment behind which we used for another batch of brew. By racking off the sediment did we leave behind too much yeast? Should I pitch another starter of 3787?

 

As others have said, these beers usually have some sugar in them to help dry them out a bit more. It is quite possible that you just have too much dextrine in your wort and it's not going to get as dry as a tripel will normally get, no matter how long you give it to ferment, or rouse the yeast, repitch, raise the temp, etc.

Adding 2-3 lbs of sugar will help dry it out, and what you might consider doing is actually making up a sugar solution on the order of 1-2 gallons or so to dilute what you've got now a bit, while also kicking up fermentation and drying everything out from the sugar.