Belgian Fermented too low

[fesser]

Hi,

I made a belgian tripel (og 1090) 5,25 gallon. After 2 weeks ive taken a grav test and it showed 1001. Over 11,7% ABV. I can take it...even thou its way too dry. It tastes a little sour. My question is Will these off flavours disappear with aging?
I pitched 10 g og mangrove jacks dry yeast and mashed 65 min at around 140-150 degrees. Fermented at around 25-26 celsius.

Best regards!

 

[andhou27]

That sounds like a tripel to me. Aging is essential to the beers taste, just let it do its thing.

 

[billl]

"mashed 65 min at around 140-150 "

Unless you measure your mash temps way more accurately than that, you are always going to get inconsistent results.

Several things can cause sour flavors. If it is a yeast biproduct, it will get better with age. If it is wild yeast or bacteria, it will get worse.

 

[fesser]

No, im pretty sure it is not any kind of infection. I like to think im a "sani-nazi".
I will rack inmediately and play wait-and-see game. I have lost a lot of wort to a massive trub, though...

Anyway, thanks a lot for taking your time to answer.
Cheers.

 

[fesser]

Could it be, btw, that i have confused sour with "spicy"?

 

[andhou27]

Could it be, btw, that i have confused sour with "spicy"?

It could be the alcohol, since it is 11%. My barleywine had a slight "sour" taste to it, I think its just uncarbonated high ABV green beer. It's almost never bacterial infection. If you sanitize and

 

[andhou27]

Could it be, btw, that i have confused sour with "spicy"?

It could be the alcohol, since it is 11%. My barleywine had a slight "sour" taste to it, I think its just uncarbonated high ABV green beer. It's almost never bacterial infection. If you sanitize and are careful at all, you won't have infection, especially because the yeast out competes the bacteria since the population is so massive and once alcohol is created, it kills the bacteria.

 

[fesser]

I have one more question. I have racked today to secondary, and have stored the vessel in a room at 57F, will this be ok or should I move it to a warmer place?


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[billl]

57 is about perfect for storage and aging.

 

[aarong]

So you had an OG of 1.090 and a FG of 1.001 so your attenuation is. (90-1)/(90)*100= 99%

That is a really high attenuation which makes me think infection. Unless you used a champagne yeast. In which case it's still high.

Just my thought may be way off.

 

[fesser]

Used mangrove jacks m27 belgian.

Coult it be also a veeeery long sparge so the enzymes continued to convert and left me with a super fermentable wort?

 

[sweetcell]

That is a really high attenuation which makes me think infection. Unless you used a champagne yeast.

somewhat OT: if he had used a champagne yeast, he would haven't gotten such high attenuation. wine yeast, like champagne, are great at chewing through simple sugars. they have problems with more complex sugars like maltose and maltotriose, which wort contains. so adding champagne yeast to wort will not result in high attenuation since they would only have fermented a portion of the sugar - the simple ones.

 

[aarong]

somewhat OT: if he had used a champagne yeast, he would haven't gotten such high attenuation. wine yeast, like champagne, are great at chewing through simple sugars. they have problems with more complex sugars like maltose and maltotriose, which wort contains. so adding champagne yeast to wort will not result in high attenuation since they would only have fermented a portion of the sugar - the simple ones.

So do you think it is an infection as well?

 

[fesser]

How could I visually recognize it if it was an infection?

 

[billl]

"Coult it be also a veeeery long sparge so the enzymes continued to convert and left me with a super fermentable wort?"

If you really did mash at 140 degrees and kept it there for a very long time and had some simple sugar like many tripel recipes, it would be possible to get down that low without an infection. Possible, but not super likely.

Honestly though, if you are at 99% right now and it tastes decent, I'd just let it sit for a bit and confirm it is at a stable fg. The most likely infection would be a wild yeast - which isn't dangerous and wouldn't be visible. The usual downside of wild yeast it that it eats everything and leaves you with a thin, funky beer. Of course, all yeast were wild yeast at one point, so its also possible you got a cool, new wild yeast that tastes decent and just is going to leave your beer drier than you intended.

The other infection option could be a bacteria - and it's making that sour taste (which could easily just be a yeast byproduct as well). In that case, it would just get more sour as time goes by. It wouldn't hurt you either, but it could make your beer way more sour than you might like.

 

[fesser]

I used 1kg candy sugar...
Should I just dump the whole thing then?

 

[aarong]

Don't dump it. Ship it to me seriously it should be fine.

 

[billl]

Don't dump. There is literally nothing to lose by letting it sit. The worst that can happen is you end up dumping it later. If it tastes decent now, there is a better than average chance it will continue to taste decent even if it is drier than you intended.

 

[fesser]

I don't know... I would definitely NOT drink 0,5l of that thing right now. I tasted it again yesterday, maybe conditioned by what I've read here, buet it certainly had such a metallic hint. Firstly (before I even considered any chances of infection) I thought of green uncarbonated high abv beer, but now I'd also bet it's an infection.

I'll bottle and let it sit for a while and see what happens.

Thank you all so much.

 

[billl]

Seriously - before you bottle, make sure the gravity really is stable. If it keeps inching down, you run the risk of bottle bombs.

 

[fesser]

But there's not much left in there...just 1001 so I assume that the only sugar left to carbonate is that 0,001 and the priming... How could it be dangerous even if it wasnt stable?

 

[sweetcell]

any fermentable beverage can go below 1.000, because alcohol is lighter than water. 0.996 isn't impossible. if you have a wild yeast that's munching away in there, who knows where it'll stop. give this puppy a little more time to stabilize.

 

[fesser]

Ok, i finally bottled a week ago. Primed with 7 grams per liter (around 100g). Boiled in 2 dl water and poured in bottling bucket. It's been sitting for 7 days now, but I dont see carbonation evidences (bubbles going up from the bottom) as I normally see when I prime with coopers carbonation drops.

I'm a little afraid of priming solution not having gotten evenly distributed, or yeast being knockedout due to high ABV (11'8%).

 

[ericbw]

I've never noticed bubbles during bottle fermentation. Usually it looks flat and I wonder if it is working.

Also, don't let too much of what you read here influence what you taste. I think we all start to think we taste metal, band aids, medicine, or other things that we hear about.

I think if you mashed as low as 140 then you made a very fermentable wort and made a very strong trippel.

I once accidentally mashed a brown ale at about 160+ and got a low ABV, malty, rich beer. I also cut the hops on purpose, so the result was not as planned but very good. So accidents can be fun!


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