1.220 OG RIS

[Easycreeper]

After a 13 hour brew day, I ended up with this:

Yup, my hydrometer doesn't read quite that high... Diluted the hydrometer sample with an equal amount of distilled water and mixed well to get a reading of 1.110. That works out to an OG of 1.220...

Hitting around the 1.220 mark was the plan from the start of the day for reasons I'll outline shortly.

 

[Easycreeper]

TL;DR: Making a high gravity beer using periodic additions of super-high gravity wort. Shooting for an ABV of 20%+ using the standard ABV calculation.

Now that I've got your attention, it's time to launch into my reason for shooting this high.

Forgive me if I’m all over the place with this. My mind, being the most active part of my person, doesn’t sit still for very long and is barely coherent at the best of times. Apologies up front.

Inspired by Black Tuesday, I figured I’d chronicle my big beer experiment (nothing so grand as that, but what other word would be as concise?) here on the forum as some others have done in the past. I’m using a slightly modified method of the one outlined by a writer at BYO, though the article is no longer available. Weird that it’s gone, but I recall enough to proceed without it.

I’ve done a couple of big beers over the last year or so, one hitting a little over 17% and the second hitting 18.2%. Both were started with wort having an OG in excess of 1.125 (the second attempt was at 1.139). I did incremental additions of simple sugars (cane sugar, piloncillo, D-90, etc.) as fermentation progressed, but both beers stalled at the 1.036 and 1.044 marks respectively. Both were drinkable, if a tad too sweet. They sure were filling though!

Perhaps the high FG had something to do with osmotic pressure? Maybe. This little experiment will be a step in the direction of finding out. Regardless of the results here, I won’t really know unless I can repeat the success or failure within my own process.

Basically, the method was to can the finished wort and add it a little at the time, so as to not overwhelm the yeast. That is, to keep the SG at 1.106 or below throughout fermentation. That means beginning with pouring an entire starter, without decanting, into a carboy and making periodic additions of super-high gravity wort.

 

[Easycreeper]

In order to keep accurate tabs on the increase in gravity I made a table outlining each addition by gravity and volume.

Below is the table from the spreadsheet that I’ll be using to keep track of each addition. Note the 1.100 SG, 1-quart addition highlighted in yellow about two-thirds of the way down. That’s another starter which will be pitched at high krausen.

The Combined Gravity column keeps track of the OG at each addition. The actual measurement will be lower at each step because it will have fermented out. I’ll keep track of where gravity is sitting at any given time with a Tilt hydrometer.

Not sure what's happening with this image. Consider it a placeholder until I can sort out the issue.

More later.

 

[flars]

What yeast did you use? Perhaps the yeast quit when the level of alcohol became toxic.

 

[Easycreeper]

What yeast did you use? Perhaps the yeast quit when the level of alcohol became toxic.

WLP099. As far as I know, it's the only game in town for huge beers at the Homebrew level.

Trying an alternate method this time to see if that makes a difference. The Brewers at The Bruery suggest keeping gravity below 1.106 as for others, so I'll give it a shot. Amazingly enough, from email correspondence, The Bruery hits an FG of around 1.016 with BT.

Going to post the recipe, process, and results as they come. It'll be tomorrow before another update though.

Thanks for the input.

 

[Jwin]

I hope this works out for you. I'll be watching for sure.
It might be worth looking into freeze concentration as well. As long as you have a vessel that can take some pressure, it works very well. I've done it twice with my 60l Speidel with success. Just add co2 to it as it drops in temp to prevent o2 issues.
Anyway, good luck and can't wait to see how this turns out.

 

[Easycreeper]

As mentioned previously, I hit an OG of 1.220. This or a little higher was the target. Basically all I did was turn all of this water (with grains and adjuncts):

…into 4.5 gallons of wort.

It was a long brew day…

So, I started with 20 gallons of distilled water since I have no earthly clue as to what our tap water profile looks like. It’s expensive, yes, but I have full control over what is in the water at this point.

It’s not like I know what I’m doing as far as building water profiles, but Bru'n Water hasn’t led me wrong yet when using profiles based on the beer’s SRM (yellow, amber, brown, black). That being said, I’m using the Black Dry profile here.

 

[Easycreeper]

Recipe stuff.

Grain bill is as follows:

24 lb Maris Otter
2.25 lb Black Roasted Barley
1.5 lb Special B
0.75 lb Black Patent
0.75 lb Flaked Oats

Pretty simple, right? Hoping to get some character in this beer from the yeast, sugars, and any wood aging when it’s all complete.

Sugars:

3 lb Cane Sugar
2 lb D-180 Candi Syrup
(yeah, that works out to around 14.6% simple sugars…)

Hops:

3.5oz Warrior (14.3 AA%) @90min
Est. IBU: 87 – I expect this to be much lower because of the reduction in hop utilization due to the high gravity wort

Yeast:

WLP099 Super High Gravity – Three step starter, building from 1 to 2 to 3 quarts, with the first two steps at a gravity of 1.036 and the final at 1.060

Other Stuff:

3 Servomyces Tablets
1 tsp Irish Moss - rehydrated
5 drops Fermcap S (three in the large kettle, two in the small)
Oxygen, oxygen, oxygen

Because of the amount of grain, I had to mash in two separate tuns which means two-thirds of the grain went into the 10 gallon tun and the other third into the 5 gallon tun.

Shot for a mash temp of 150, pH of 5.3, and efficiency of around 80% when mashing at a ratio of 1.64 quarts/lb of grain for 90 minutes. Hit the temperature dead on (dropping to 147 by mash out) and ended up with a mash pH of 5.53. efficiency ended up at 79% with 4.75 gallons of wort collected.

 

[Easycreeper]

All wort collected, the boil commenced. Time to divide and conquer to reduce the time boiling… added all of the sugars early on, so let those Maillard reactions happen!

Ignore my garage floor that needs sweeping...

This is a pic of the wort at the 5 gallon mark. It was so viscous at this point that I had to reduce the burner flame to keep from boiling over. It was producing almost 4 gallons worth of bubbles!

Ended up with a boil time of 8-9 hours total and as stated previously, mash efficiency was around 79%. Not too bad, but it probably would have made more sense to use additional grain instead of boiling for so long. Maybe I could have saved myself some time on the brew day. Maybe next time.

 

[Easycreeper]

Boil done, wort chilled, and first half gallon added to the fermentor, I embarked on what I assumed was going to be the difficult part of the process having never done it before: Canning. Fortunately enough, it wasn't difficult at all.

Using 64oz jars for canning because that's what works best for my plan for incremental additions. Plus, there are fewer jars to fill. I sterilized the jars in the oven a few days previous and screwed the lids on, so a quick dunk in StarSan should keep me mostly safe.

There’s no pressure cooker at my house, so I’m stuck with the boiling method instead of the preferred higher temperature pressure cooker method. The latter is supposed to kill off any remaining nasties for prolonged storage, but hopefully the extended boil and acidity of the beer will be enough to prevent any spoilage.

Have I mentioned how dense this wort is?? It comes out of the valve of the BK like candi syrup, only thicker! Filling each jar took better than a minute...

Canning has all the charm of bottling, by the way. The only solace is that the containers are larger and there are fewer of them. I'm reminded why I don't bottle unless I absolutely have to.

The remaining 4.25 gallons are canned and sealed:

Off to the fridge for storage!

 

[Easycreeper]

That last post brings me up to what is currently transpiring.

The starter/wort combo is fermenting away, though the Tilt is registering a temperature a little on the cool side for WLP099 (upper 50s). Having a hard time regulating this because the thermowell doesn't quite reach the wort yet, so its measuring air temperature. It'll probably take two more additions before the thermowell is usable.

Better planning is in order for next time...

I'll keep updating as additions are made.

 

[AMessenger]

Very cool project!

Looking forward to reading the results

 

[Jwin]

Have you considered doing a small side fermentation to check and see what your potential FG of that wort could be? My worry is that long of a boil will introduce a lot of complex sugars from the maillard reaction of the extended boil. I mean, you basically made wort Candi syrup. Rooting for you. May Gambrinus smile upon you.

 

[Easycreeper]

Have you considered doing a small side fermentation to check and see what your potential FG of that wort could be? My worry is that long of a boil will introduce a lot of complex sugars from the maillard reaction of the extended boil. I mean, you basically made wort Candi syrup. Rooting for you. May Gambrinus smile upon you.

Good point, but I'm not sure how to test that really. The wort is so thick, I think the yeast will have difficulty doing anything with it. I'm hoping the dilution from the starter will be enough to help them out.

Maybe I could dilute a couple of cups of wort with distilled water? That would give me a ratio of what can be fermented based on the dilution rate. Thoughts?

 

[Jwin]

You just need enough to fill a hydrometer tube. Could even just put 4 oz wort and 4 oz water in a sanitized beer bottle and set it somewhere warm with some foil on the top.
At least you would know if complex sugars may cause any FG problems or not. Could keep you from banging your head against a problem you can't fix down the road. Just an idea.

 

[Easycreeper]

You just need enough to fill a hydrometer tube. Could even just put 4 oz wort and 4 oz water in a sanitized beer bottle and set it somewhere warm with some foil on the top.
At least you would know if complex sugars may cause any FG problems or not. Could keep you from banging your head against a problem you can't fix down the road. Just an idea.

Thanks. I'll do that since I've got some extra wort left over.

 

[PatrickGoss]

Wow.

I once did a RIS that started at 1.145...... cannot imagine doing what you are doing. Really just posting here to make sure I do t miss out on updates.

 

[Easycreeper]

36 hours after adding wort to the starter, the Tilt is reading 1.066, down from an initial gravity of 1.093. Its reading a little low (about 4 points) compared to the gravity calculated from the starting gravities and volumes of the starter and half gallon addition. Didn't bother calibrating the Tilt because I don't need very accurate readings - only need to know when gravity starts to become stable.

Maintaining a good fermentation temp has been difficult thus far. Because the thermowell isn't touching the wort, the temperature has been sitting in the 50s (according to the Tilt). I'm having to leave the ferm chamber unplugged for the most part to get the temps into the 60s. Pretty sure the low temps have kept the fermentation from progressing any farther than it has. But, it's still going, so hope is far from lost.

 

[Easycreeper]

OK, fixed the volume and gravity tracking table in post #3. Sorry it took so long. The file was on my work computer and I don't have access over the weekend (thankfully).

 

[Easycreeper]

Having a bit of a scare early on with this beer. Yesterday afternoon, according to the Tilt, the gravity flat-lined in the 1.058-1.059 range and didn’t change overnight. That’s a little disheartening considering the time and money invested so far. Seems that what @Jwin mentioned in a previous post about complex sugars had come to pass…

But, I had a thought: Because the volume is so little just yet, maybe the Tilt is partially resting on the bottom of the carboy. That would explain a sudden “stall” in the gravity drop. So, I added a second half gallon of 1.220 wort to the carboy to increase the volume and give the yeast more to eat. This of course bumped up the gravity again to about 1.100 once everything came to solution and the Tilt settled.

Judging from the increase in density, the gravity of the wort in the carboy was about 1.052, which is around 6 or so points lower than what the Tilt was reading. So, my assumption was partially correct, however, I’m thinking that there may be a high level of unfermentable sugars in the wort.

What to do? Well, having heard of the magical properties of Beano, I took a quick trip to the grocery store this morning before work. Thank goodness for self-checkout lines… It would have been sort of embarrassing to buy an anti-gas and bloating product at 4:00 in the morning. I even bought name brand this time because the active ingredient (alpha galactosidase) was different in the generic. The plan is to add a couple of crushed up tablets to the fermenting wort tonight, keeping fingers crossed that this doesn’t result in a beer that is akin to rocket fuel instead of a big RIS.

Think positive thoughts…

 

[Jwin]

I think it's a little early to jump to Beano. Warm it up and rouse the yeast, maybe ever physically stirring. That time spent in the 50s probably pushed a good amount of yeast into dormancy and possible caused them to floc out of solution. I did the same once with 002, which drops like a rock, in a Double Jack clone.
If you still have some wort left out, you could Beano it, then heat it up to denature the enzymes. I've heard/read varying results with the use of Beano. I'm not so sure it would do much in this case. Your asking it to turn caramel back into sugar.

Do you have any yeast saved from your starter? Maybe a fresh pitch with the remainder of the wort would be in order.

But yeah, warm it, rouse it and relax and see what happens before plan B. You need to get your yeast happy and active again either way.

 

[Smellyglove]

Have you read about the "trick" where you mash low for like half an hour, and add some of that wort into the fermenter? The enzymes will convert some of your wort into simpler sugars so it's easier for the yeast to digest. I gave this tip to another guy who had a stalled fermentation on a big-ish beer. He had two carboys and used wort in one and active starter in the other one, the one with the wort dropped far lower than the one with active yeast.

 

[Easycreeper]

I think it's a little early to jump to Beano. Warm it up and rouse the yeast, maybe ever physically stirring. That time spent in the 50s probably pushed a good amount of yeast into dormancy and possible caused them to floc out of solution. I did the same once with 002, which drops like a rock, in a Double Jack clone.
If you still have some wort left out, you could Beano it, then heat it up to denature the enzymes. I've heard/read varying results with the use of Beano. I'm not so sure it would do much in this case. Your asking it to turn caramel back into sugar.

Do you have any yeast saved from your starter? Maybe a fresh pitch with the remainder of the wort would be in order.

But yeah, warm it, rouse it and relax and see what happens before plan B. You need to get your yeast happy and active again either way.

Thanks for the words of encouragement. I'll hold off for a couple of days and see what happens.

Temp is sitting a 65 right now and gravity has dropped from 1.100 to 1.086 between 4:30 this morning and right now. Hopefully that trend will continue on.

Pretty sure I'll have to resort to beano at some point, but if it's like you say, it WO t help at all with the Maillard reactions...

I've got another vial of 099 in the fridge and will be building up another starter. May go ahead and split it early on and do a forced fermentation. And I do just happen to have an extra quart of wort to mess around with.

 

[Easycreeper]

Have you read about the "trick" where you mash low for like half an hour, and add some of that wort into the fermenter? The enzymes will convert some of your wort into simpler sugars so it's easier for the yeast to digest. I gave this tip to another guy who had a stalled fermentation on a big-ish beer. He had two carboys and used wort in one and active starter in the other one, the one with the wort dropped far lower than the one with active yeast.

I'll give this a shot too if the other stuff doesn't work. Thanks for the tip!

 

[Jwin]

I'll give this a shot too if the other stuff doesn't work. Thanks for the tip!

I would be concerned about lacto doing this, though lacto would surely lower you FG. The temp that it takes to kill lacto is high enough to denature enzymes. Many Homebrew shops to carry amylase enzyme, but again, not sure it would help.
Worst case, you could dilute with sugar water to 15g and have a bunch of stout I guess.

 

[Easycreeper]

I would be concerned about lacto doing this, though lacto would surely lower you FG. The temp that it takes to kill lacto is high enough to denature enzymes. Many Homebrew shops to carry amylase enzyme, but again, not sure it would help.
Worst case, you could dilute with sugar water to 15g and have a bunch of stout I guess.

This is why I like this forum so much. People are always helpful and offer different viewpoints to your own, often thinking of stuff you overlooked.

Yeah, lacto or anything of that ilk would be awful. I've got amylase enzyme at the house which would be a safer alternative to both the mash idea and the Beano.

 

[bigdawg86]

I had a stout 1.135 that stalled at 1.042 and I pitched a starter of TYB Dry Belgian Ale and it chugged for another 4 weeks after! Just a consideration...
I don't have a final gravity yet but it bubbled slowly for 4 weeks after pitching.

 

[Comfort_Zone]

Use TYB Dry Belgian. One of the problems with 099 is that it's rather finicky. Next time try to limit your OG to around 1.100 to limit stress on the yeast. Rouse the yeast daily and add smaller amounts of sugar at least twice a day. Dry Belgian will definitely chew through that.

 

[ten80]

Safale T-58 is also another contender for high gravity ferments, and it might be the same (or a very similar) yeast as TBY Dry Belgian. I got mine to 16.0% ABV without adding any oxygen or nutrients, then I added a WLP099 starter and more sugars to hit 18.5% abv. The beer finished at 1.020 which is quite try for a beer starting at 1.150 or so (accounting for sugars added during fermentation). I'm not convinced that 099 did any work.

 

[Easycreeper]

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I may be freaking out too early on anyway. Being able to watch the gravity change (or not) in real time probably isn't the best thing when one suffers from a lack of patience.

I'll give it a few days to see what happens since it has been less than three full days since the first addition of wort.

The calculation I have shows OG to be 1.151 based on the volume in the carboy and the gravity of each addition. Being down to 1.085 (last Tilt measurement - not calibrated) after less than 72 hours is pretty decent.

Just getting uptight about the time invested I guess. So much for being that guy who has all of his crap together and wows everyone with a successful experiment that held no surprises.

 

[Jwin]

I'll say again, rouse, warm, wait then evaluate.
We're all waiting patiently with you. Cheers [emoji482]

 

[MaxStout]

Subbed, as I want to see how this goes. Pullin' for you!

If this beer works out, you should consider writing a detailed article for HBT. I've never seen anything like this before at the homebrew level, and I'll bet many people would be interested to read about it.

 

[Easycreeper]

Subbed, as I want to see how this goes. Pullin' for you!

If this beer works out, you should consider writing a detailed article for HBT. I've never seen anything like this before at the homebrew level, and I'll bet many people would be interested to read about it.

Ha ha. Let's see how this beer ends up first. I may be headed for monumental failure here...

You might look up forum member paulthenurse as he and his crew have done a couple of brews of this magnitude in the past. They approached it differently than me and had mixed success with one of the batches quitting on them at a pretty high FG. If I recall correctly, they took that one to a distiller to salvage what they could. Their first attempt apparently turned out pretty great and was comparable to Utopias, if at a lower ABV.

 

[Easycreeper]

I'll say again, rouse, warm, wait then evaluate.
We're all waiting patiently with you. Cheers [emoji482]

Roused and warming. Waiting to evaluate... Gonna sleep on it and add another shot of oxygen in the morning.

 

[Jtk78]

Subbed to follow along. Really interesting approach to a monster beer. Hope it's very successful for you. If it does fail, you'll with make alcoholic syrup for your pancakes, or high octane fuel.

 

[bigdawg86]

I think pitching TYB dry belgian BEFORE the alcohol content gets too high would be something I would consider... Like I previously said I pitched mine at 12.2% ABV and I think the subsequent fermentation was much slower due to many yeasties getting killed off by the booze. The beer literally took 6 weeks to stop bubbling after pitching that yeast...

 

[Comfort_Zone]

Kinda reminds me of this......

https://byo.com/article/21-alcohol-all-grain-beer/

 

[Jwin]

I don't fully understand the stepped feeding of wort.
This article is written as though high gravity wort is hard on the yeast. It's not. High alcohol% is. You can pitch any yeast you please and it will ferment until it reaches a point of toxicity. Correct?
On one hand, I kinda get the idea that you are making sure the yeast are consuming some of the longer strain sugars in the first additions, before chomping at the simple sugars in the later additions.
But, on the other hand, they will still find themselves in a high alcohol environment facing a certain percentage complex sugars.
It's trying to treat the beer the same as step feeding simple sugar, but it's not the same at all from a yeast perspective. I'm also not all that convinced that o2 towards the end of the process is of any benefit as I doubt the yeast are trying to propagate much at that point.
Now, if you were oxygenating the new wort and pitching yeast into the new wort and allowing it to ferment to krausen before adding it to the prior fermentation, that would be beneficial as your adding active healthy yeast to the party.
Even if you were to get the yeast in the first ferment to propagate, there could be some costly mutations occurring in such a stressed environment.

Someone please correct me if this thinking is off as yeast health and science is still one of my larger opportunities.

Also, I still think boiling 18g down to 4g is asking for trouble no matter how you shake it.
One would be much better off doing serial mashes(mashing with wort from a previous mash) and decreasing boil time in my opinion. It would require more grain, but in the end I bet you would have a much more fermentable wort. And you could just sparge the other grain and gyle like crazy from it.

I may just have to try my hand at this one day. I have plans for a 60# Barleywine(11g) at some point. Gonna wait to get the RIMS completed before I tackle that one though.
One last word, I still believe fractional freezing is the way to go for BBIIGG beers. It's the way BrewDog does End of History(55% abv) and I believe Tactical Nuclear Penguin(32% abv). The key is being able to push co2 into the fermentor as it freezes(suck back,o2), and also removing the eisbeer afterwards with minimal o2 exposure. Anyone with a 60l Speidel, this is quite easy if you have the ability to add co2(NorCal brewing has some great solutions). When I did an eisbeer in my 60l in an upright freezer, all of the frozen water was a floating ball in the middle of the fermentor and I easily pulled the beer from the stock spigot. I imagine any conical would perform similar. Not so sure about buckets, etc but ice will float regardless so I suppose as long as you have a spigot, anything is possible.
Cheers.

 

[Easycreeper]

Kinda reminds me of this......

https://byo.com/article/21-alcohol-all-grain-beer/

That's the article I was looking for! The link I had was broken and I couldn't find another source. Thanks!

You are correct. That's where the idea for the incremental additions comes from. Only I'm not worried about staying all grain.

 

[Easycreeper]

I don't fully understand the stepped feeding of wort.
This article is written as though high gravity wort is hard on the yeast. It's not. High alcohol% is. You can pitch any yeast you please and it will ferment until it reaches a point of toxicity. Correct?
On one hand, I kinda get the idea that you are making sure the yeast are consuming some of the longer strain sugars in the first additions, before chomping at the simple sugars in the later additions.
But, on the other hand, they will still find themselves in a high alcohol environment facing a certain percentage complex sugars.
It's trying to treat the beer the same as step feeding simple sugar, but it's not the same at all from a yeast perspective. I'm also not all that convinced that o2 towards the end of the process is of any benefit as I doubt the yeast are trying to propagate much at that point.
Now, if you were oxygenating the new wort and pitching yeast into the new wort and allowing it to ferment to krausen before adding it to the prior fermentation, that would be beneficial as your adding active healthy yeast to the party.
Even if you were to get the yeast in the first ferment to propagate, there could be some costly mutations occurring in such a stressed environment.

Someone please correct me if this thinking is off as yeast health and science is still one of my larger opportunities.

Also, I still think boiling 18g down to 4g is asking for trouble no matter how you shake it.
One would be much better off doing serial mashes(mashing with wort from a previous mash) and decreasing boil time in my opinion. It would require more grain, but in the end I bet you would have a much more fermentable wort. And you could just sparge the other grain and gyle like crazy from it.

I may just have to try my hand at this one day. I have plans for a 60# Barleywine(11g) at some point. Gonna wait to get the RIMS completed before I tackle that one though.
One last word, I still believe fractional freezing is the way to go for BBIIGG beers. It's the way BrewDog does End of History(55% abv) and I believe Tactical Nuclear Penguin(32% abv). The key is being able to push co2 into the fermentor as it freezes(suck back,o2), and also removing the eisbeer afterwards with minimal o2 exposure. Anyone with a 60l Speidel, this is quite easy if you have the ability to add co2(NorCal brewing has some great solutions). When I did an eisbeer in my 60l in an upright freezer, all of the frozen water was a floating ball in the middle of the fermentor and I easily pulled the beer from the stock spigot. I imagine any conical would perform similar. Not so sure about buckets, etc but ice will float regardless so I suppose as long as you have a spigot, anything is possible.
Cheers.

Check out osmotic pressure. If the wort density gets too high, the yeast are unable to metabolize the wort as effectively. At least that's as far as my understanding goes. Kind of like honey won't ferment unless diluted with water.

White labs suggested handling of the yeast is here: https://www.whitelabs.com/yeast-bank/wlp099-super-high-gravity-ale-yeast

If I do this again, and I probably will, I might give the serial mash a shot depending on how this finishes up. Considering the price of grain versus propane, it's probably pretty close to a wash to get to the desired OG. I would be concerned with mas pH though after the first iteration, but my grasp of mash chemistry is admittedly weak.