Any way to lower FG?

[Baza]

So i have stout with a high FG
I'm pretty sure I have a high level of unfermentable sugar in it. I used beersmith it predicted a OG of 1.060 and FG of 1.025. my recipe is extract iincluding 1.2kg of steeped crystal and Choc grains. BS only estimates about 4p/p/g vs 16-18p/p/g that other souces suggest. It also assumes sugars from crystal malt are as fermentable and extract. combined with lactose suggests realistic FG will be low 1.030's is there any way to get this down

thanks in advance

ps If Beersmith was accurate I never would have added lactose

 

[joshesmusica]

give us the full recipe and we can help you figure it out better. it seems like a lot of specialty malts, but without seeing the recipe there's no way to tell.

also as far as beersmith goes, do you have it selected as extract, partial mash, or all grain? i've found that you only really want to select the extract one if it's only extract being used. if you're doing extract with steeping grains, it seems best to select partial mash. if you're doing a mini mash/partial mash with some extract to boost the OG, i find it best to select all grain still.

 

[Baza]

recipe is
3.4kg LME
700g crystal 80
350 choc male
250 carafa
500g lactose
Safale s04

beersmith underestimates OG for all these ingredients it's not even accurate for the LME and i assumes sugars for crystal will ferment like all others. manual calculations based on steeped grains being 40% fermentable will leave me around 1.03 I'm keen to get this lower

 

[joshesmusica]

That's 35% specialty stuff which are all non-fermentables, which is your problem. If you've measured the same FG more than once over a matter of a few days, it's likely done fermenting. Sometimes people will say to try some champagne yeast, but I'm not really sure how much that's gonna help you at this point. When I get home I'll run those numbers through beersmith and see what it's saying. What size batch was this?
Also in the future I would stick with proven recipes until you get a handle on all the ingredients. Or at the very least consult hbt before you brew.

 

[kombat]

i assumes sugars for crystal will ferment like all others.

They definitely will not.

 

[Baza]

They definitely will not.

spelling error I meant to as it as in beer smith assumes all things ferment equally

 

[Baza]

That's 35% specialty stuff which are all non-fermentables, which is your problem. If you've measured the same FG more than once over a matter of a few days, it's likely done fermenting. Sometimes people will say to try some champagne yeast, but I'm not really sure how much that's gonna help you at this point. When I get home I'll run those numbers through beersmith and see what it's saying. What size batch was this?
Also in the future I would stick with proven recipes until you get a handle on all the ingredients. Or at the very least consult hbt before you brew.

yep I'd agree should have keep it simple and used a tested recipe. I wrongly thought beersmith would be accurate for OG and FG.
19ltr (5 gl) size

 

[joshesmusica]

i think you should try reading some stuff about how to brew. just google search how to brew by john palmer.

or look up about extract brewing.

and as i said, in the future, i highly suggest doing a recipe that is proven to be good.

i'm not sure where BS got it wrong. For me when I typed in 19L batch, it gave me an output of 1.021 for the SG. But I believe that should be wrong, because, as i said, you threw 35% of nonfermentable sugars in there, and actually likely a bit more depending on what type of LME you used. how long has this been fermenting? it's got a ton of dark and crystal malts that will needs lots of conditioning and aging anyways. i would leave this in the primary for at least 4 weeks before you bottle it.

 

[passedpawn]

If it stays above 1.030, I'd add amylase enzymes directly to the beer. Your homebrew shop should carry it in powder form. See this thread: Escape from Stuck Fermentation Mountain - AE to the Rescue. That's a pretty safe solution. If that doesn't work, you could add some beano, which contains another enzyme (galactinase or similar) that will break down most sugars so the yeast can ferment them. Using beano is going nuclear on your beer and might really bring down the SG, perhaps creating a different problem. I wouldn't recommend beano unless the beer is undrinkable.

If you do either of these things, and you're planning on bottling, make sure to give it several weeks to finish.

 

[joshesmusica]

just wondering, though, did you pitch the dry yeast straight into the wort, or did you rehydrate first? how old was the yeast?

 

[TriggerHappy]

You can add water, that would bring it down. (not good advice)

 

[Baza]

joshesmusica -
yep I've had a look at john palmers book I've estimated OG and SG based on his estimates of gavity points for differnt ingredients and a thread on here about fermentablity of crystal malt see below. If i've done this right then beersmith doesn't even calculate gravity for LME right.



I made a 1.5ltr with s-04 yeast starter 24hr before pitching yeast had expiry of mid 2016. I didn't properly aerate the wort
it went to 1.04 in 3 days then stopped after a 3 days of no movement made a another small starter with some MJ work horse yeast. that went to 1.035 and has been there the last 48 hours. fermentation started at 17 degrees C (62F) i raised it to 19 after a few days to keep it going.


your right I should have started simpler but I'm learning heaps

View attachment Book1.pdf

 

[Queequeg]

I'm tempted to say add Brett or lambic bacillus. Or add iso extract to balance beer and sugar to dry it.

 

[joshesmusica]

joshesmusica -
yep I've had a look at john palmers book I've estimated OG and SG based on his estimates of gavity points for differnt ingredients and a thread on here about fermentablity of crystal malt see below. If i've done this right then beersmith doesn't even calculate gravity for LME right.



I made a 1.5ltr with s-04 yeast starter 24hr before pitching yeast had expiry of mid 2016. I didn't properly aerate the wort
it went to 1.04 in 3 days then stopped after a 3 days of no movement made a another small starter with some MJ work horse yeast. that went to 1.035 and has been there the last 48 hours. fermentation started at 17 degrees C (62F) i raised it to 19 after a few days to keep it going.


your right I should have started simpler but I'm learning heaps

keep learning! you'll get there. this is just one small hiccup on your way to making good beer.

the thing that strikes me is that you made a starter with dry yeast. you don't need to do this. if you did though, you would still need to rehydrate them before you poured them in the starter. roughly half of the cells die off from shock when poured immediately onto wort.

also, 24 hours isn't really enough time to get significant cell growth from a starter. there might have been some at that point, but it was mostly the uptake of nutrients. you need at least 48 hours for that to start happening. so you pitched roughly 200 billion cells from the dry pack, but nearly half of them died. you may have gotten some cell growth, but it likely didn't even get back up to 200 billion. which i'm assuming that the 200 billion was under-pitching it already since you were wanting to make a starter. so what happened was that you severely under-pitched into an oxygen-less environment which stressed the yeast out way too much, hence the fact that they quit early. both times.

as far as your math goes, here's what i get if i do the numbers myself:
3.4kg = 7.5lbs (or 7.495) * 36 = 270 /5 = 1.054
.7kg = 1.5lbs * 34 = 51 * .25 = 13 /5 = 1.003
.35kg = .8lbs * 34 = 27 * .25 = 7 /5 = 1.001
.25kg = .6lbs * 32 = 19 * .25 = 5 /5 = 1.001
.5kg = 1.1lbs * 35 = 39 /5 = 1.008

I just assumed that you only extracted 25% of the sugars from steeping the specialty grains, that amount could easily vary (and beersmith estimates 15%, which I find to typically be a little low). But you should be getting 100% of the ppg from the lactose and lme. so:

^= 334 total gravity points /5 gallons = 1.067 OG (beersmith estimated 1.061 for me at 19 liters)

so you got 1.067 wort. great! BUT your discrepancy is that you're assuming fermentability from your steeping grains. which isn't accurate because you didn't mash them with anything that had any enzymes to break down those sugars. so all of your specialty grains and then of course your lactose are absolutely non-fermentable.

That leaves us to figure out how much of the LME will ferment out. So s-04 has an average attenuation of about 73% so 1.054 * .73 = 1.039 worth of fermentables in your wort. 1.067 - 1.039 = 1.028 FG

but again, that's considering a healthy yeast. although i have seen some experiments done against this supposed norm of healthy yeast at proper pitch rates. it seems the beers usually will ferment out. but it takes a lot more time. so you checking at 3 days means the first set of yeast likely hadn't quit yet. i just pitched a healthy amount of yeast into properly aerated wort and it was nearly finished fermenting at 4 days (according to activity), but I still won't check the gravity until about 2 weeks in. I don't recommend checking the gravity so early on next time!

hope this helps.

 

[kombat]

If Beersmith was accurate I never would have added lactose

[...]

beersmith underestimates OG for all these ingredients it's not even accurate for the LME

[...]

I wrongly thought beersmith would be accurate for OG and FG

[...]

beersmith doesn't even calculate gravity for LME right.

Dude, just ... stop, OK? It's not Beersmith. It's you.

If Beersmith were as flawed as you're portraying it, then why would so many people (including full-blown professional breweries) be using it, especially after so many years? If your numbers are off, it's because you're using it wrong.

All LME is not created equal. Are you sure you're selecting the exact same brand/type of LME from the inventory? Also, I assume you realize that you can change the settings that Beersmith assumes for gravity contribution of any malt, adjunct, or extract?

As for FG, how in the world could Beersmith be expected to accurately predict that reliably? FG depends on a number of factors that Beersmith cannot control, such as fermentation temperature (are you positive you stuck to the fermentation profile outlined in Beersmith exactly?), mash temperature (did you nail your mash temperature exactly, for the entire mash, or is it possible you mashed a little high or drifted a little low?), yeast viability and cell count, crush size, fermentor geometry, and more. It's an estimate. It's not going to be exactly right every time.

Continuing to blame a useful, reliable tool that many of us use successfully all the time is just making you look like an ignorant whiner.

I made a 1.5ltr with s-04 yeast

Don't make starters with dry yeast.

24hr before pitching

Why such a short time? Starters (made with liquid yeast) should be made at least a couple of days before brewing, to give the yeast time to complete their entire fermentation cycle, and flocculate out a little bit.

I didn't properly aerate the wort

And yet you still think the software is the reason you're having so much trouble? You're making several big mistakes, and you want to blame a tool made and used by people who know far more about brewing than you?

 

[chugach1]

Hahahaha. Funny post Kombat. I was just at national home few conference in San Diego and I was next to Mitch Steele while he was getting a copy of Beersmith from Brad. Stone brewing uses it so...........

 

[Baza]

joshesmusica

thanks for your positive input
I did hydrate the yeast before adding to the starter. I made the starter because when i used a pitch calculator it suggested I didn't have enough yeast cells. Next time I'll just hydrate the yeast and pitch into the beer
Yes I've learned not all sugars ferment equally.

Unless recommend otherwise I plan bottle half and add Amylase to the other half and treat this batch as a learning experience.

Kombat
With regards to my comments on beersmith. All i did is down load it and try it out I'm not aware that I changed any of the settings and I've triple checked everything is entered correctly. (lactose marked as unfermentable etc)
If you use john Palmers book to estimate OG for steeped grains and LME then you get a much higher OG. very close to what I got in reality

http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter13-2.html

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter3-4.html

I have since learned from this excellent thread
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=208361&page=3
that steeped crystal i used is about 40% fermentable. it looks like BS treats all sugars (aside form lactose) as equally fermentable. I understand that FG is just an estimate but by underestimating sugars extracted and over estimating fermentablity of those sugars, for me anyway, BS produced an an unachievable target. Even if I hand not made stuff ups I would have ended up with very sweet beer. I several other people have plugged the recipe into BS and got the same low original and final gravity that I did. I'm well aware of my own failings as a noob brewer but Please plug the numbers in BS and tell me what you get. It looks like a good program and if I'm miss using it then I'd love to know otherwise maybe it could be improved on

 

[joshesmusica]

joshesmusica



thanks for your positive input

I did hydrate the yeast before adding to the starter. I made the starter because when i used a pitch calculator it suggested I didn't have enough yeast cells. Next time I'll just hydrate the yeast and pitch into the beer

Yes I've learned not all sugars ferment equally.



Unless recommend otherwise I plan bottle half and add Amylase to the other half and treat this batch as a learning experience.



Kombat

With regards to my comments on beersmith. All i did is down load it and try it out I'm not aware that I changed any of the settings and I've triple checked everything is entered correctly. (lactose marked as unfermentable etc)

If you use john Palmers book to estimate OG for steeped grains and LME then you get a much higher OG. very close to what I got in reality



http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter13-2.html



http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter3-4.html



I have since learned from this excellent thread

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=208361&page=3

that steeped crystal i used is about 40% fermentable. it looks like BS treats all sugars (aside form lactose) as equally fermentable. I understand that FG is just an estimate but by underestimating sugars extracted and over estimating fermentablity of those sugars, for me anyway, BS produced an an unachievable target. Even if I hand not made stuff ups I would have ended up with very sweet beer. I several other people have plugged the recipe into BS and got the same low original and final gravity that I did. I'm well aware of my own failings as a noob brewer but Please plug the numbers in BS and tell me what you get. It looks like a good program and if I'm miss using it then I'd love to know otherwise maybe it could be improved on

Your crystal malts only become 40% fermentable when mashed, not when steeped. You can try adding an alpha amylase, it might be a good experiment. It's a good idea to bottle some of it so at least it's not all ruined. But be aware that at this point you really don't want a ton of headspace in the fermenter or you're just begging for an infection.

As for kombat and beersmith, I don't think that he's saying you messed with the settings, in fact he's saying the opposite. It's a really good tool, but unfortunately it's a tool that takes some set up to get it to give you the right output. You gotta do some work and make sure all of the input data is correct first; mainly the things you control, like volume spaces, equipment profiles, burn off rate, etc.
and unfortunately again, often times it's not incredibly accurate with FGs. It's really just a rough estimate as there are so many different parameters that go into how the FG comes out. In your case you got a high FG (and higher than beersmith predicted) because of having too many steeped grains and underpitching a bit.

Since you're already steeping grains you might as well read up on partial mashing. It's just as easy, only takes a bit more time, and then you'll convert some of those specialty malts' sugars.

 

[kombat]

it looks like BS treats all sugars (aside form lactose) as equally fermentable. I understand that FG is just an estimate but by underestimating sugars extracted and over estimating fermentablity of those sugars, for me anyway, BS produced an an unachievable target.

I'm still not sure you're fully understanding the chemistry of the situation.

With respect to the original gravity (OG), it doesn't matter whether the sugars are fermentable or not, or if they're even sugars. All OG is is a measurement of the density of the liquid. That density is simply a sum of all the density contributions from the sugars converted from starches (by enzymes during the mash), leeched from the crystal malts (by steeping), or added directly to the wort (i.e., dextrose), as well as any other non-sugar compounds that contribute gravity (such as lactose).

Fermentable or not, it doesn't matter when calculating OG.

Now, as far as FG goes, yes, fermentability matters a great deal. And as I already pointed out, Beersmith cannot accurately predict that, because it depends on too many things Beersmith cannot possibly know about. It's a rough guess, but should never be taken as gospel.

 

[Baza]

could you guys could test and/or explain one last thing for me that would be appreciated

Open a new recipe in beersmith
enter 7.5lb of LME, make sure its set to extract
click on equipment select anything including the default 3 gallon pot
click OK

my OG drops by 5 points. why does this occur?

I downloaded and tested a new copy on another computer to check I hadn't messed with the setting and It still happens.

 

[joshesmusica]

could you guys could test and/or explain one last thing for me that would be appreciated

Open a new recipe in beersmith
enter 7.5lb of LME, make sure its set to extract
click on equipment select anything including the default 3 gallon pot
click OK

my OG drops by 5 points. why does this occur?

I downloaded and tested a new copy on another computer to check I hadn't messed with the setting and It still happens.

what size batch do you have selected? each time that you switch equipment, it switches the default batch size. i have mine set to 19L. when i select the 2 gallon pot, it turns that into 18.93L. which instantly gave me 3 gravity points. also, your gravity will change depending on if you need to top off. so each time that you select different equipment, go and click on the volumes tab.

another experiment:
enter 7.5lb of lme, make sure it's set to extract
then switch between all kinds of yeasts.

you'll then get our point about how it's only an estimate with the FG.

this is why we're trying to tell you that it takes some time to figure it all out, and get all of the input data correct. once you got that down, then the output data will start to be more and more correct.

 

[joshesmusica]

also, be sure to never hesitate to ask on here. your questions aren't even half as dumb as some of the dumbest questions asked on here. most of the new brewers asking for help on here seem like they just found a bucket, was gifted an ingredients kit, and thought, "this sownds laik maykin sum sweet aissed tee. cain't be that hard cannit?"

then they come on here and ask what that foamy stuff is on the top? why it smells like that? i got tons of bubblies, then no bubblies, what do i do now? i racked to secondary on the third day, now i got a 1.040 fg, can i bottle? i bottled too early, and now my beer is flowing like a fountain when i open it, can i fix it?

you're trying to figure things out, and you got some of the math right, just with some slightly off parameters. keep going and i have a strong feeling this is gonna click for you.

oh, and @kombat can seem like a jerk sometimes. but he's just direct. i like to think deep down he's got a good heart and likes to help people.

 

[MattyIce]

could you guys could test and/or explain one last thing for me that would be appreciated

Open a new recipe in beersmith
enter 7.5lb of LME, make sure its set to extract
click on equipment select anything including the default 3 gallon pot
click OK

my OG drops by 5 points. why does this occur?

I downloaded and tested a new copy on another computer to check I hadn't messed with the setting and It still happens.

Likely has something to do with equipment profiles. My all-grain stuff has been spot-on.

 

[kombat]

oh, and @kombat can seem like a jerk sometimes. but he's just direct. i like to think deep down he's got a good heart and likes to help people.

True story. I actually thought I was being particularly easy on him.

I'm working on it.

 

[joshesmusica]

True story. I actually thought I was being particularly easy on him.

I'm working on it.

honestly, the directness is really quite strange coming from a canadian too!

 

[2005STi]

Did you add the yeast into your recipe? I never did this out of laziness and always had BS giving me higher than expected FGs even for low mash temps. Then one day I threw US-05 into my recipe (w/ a mash temp of 148F) and voila! FG estimated at 1.010 which is right where I always end up with that profile.