Crazy/foolish brewing tactics - trying to get a Scotch to finish

[deprogram]

Ok, so I'm a new home brewer. Not new to brewing in general, and did a bunch of large batches at a brew-your-own beer place back in Ohio, but certainly new to controlling every aspect of the brew.

To cut to the chase: I brewed morebeer.com's KIT201, which is an extract Scotch. I used their recommended White Labs Edinburgh. Everything went well, OG was 1.088 which I was slightly disappointed in, but that's just the way I am. Fermentation began almost immediately, had a nice, long, vigorous ferment at a decently controlled 68 degrees. While the fermentation was still going fairly strong I added 3 lbs of dark invert sugar (yes, I realize I am not quite sane) directly to the primary. Fermentation kicked back up again and was doing fine.

Then I visited my LHBS. I was strongly urged to get the beer into a secondary 'even if it was still fermenting'. Also 'even if it was a high gravity beer'. I was skeptical, but figured that most of the live yeast were probably in suspension (not true, I find out later) I'd still be ok and the beer would finish in the secondary.

Wrong.

It fermented for a while, settled out, and stopped at 1.025. Like, stopped. I guess it was a combo of leaving 90% of my live yeast in my primary and getting to a high enough ABV that the poor remaining yeast weren't up to the task.

So. The beer tasted fine but way too sweet, and I wasn't happy. I felt like I would have done the right thing if left alone (I wasn't even planning a secondary). I decided to do something stupid like pitch an abbey yeast and nutrient pack directly into the secondary at a nice ambient 75 degrees. I didn't care, I just wanted the beer to finish.

I get to my LHBS, a good 5 mile drive and... closed on Mondays. I experience a mild sense of annoyance. Then, as I'm driving home I realize that there's a Belgian Golden that's still fermenting strongly on the shelf right next to the scotch ale.

So, when I got home, I swirled the Golden up to get lots of yeast in suspension on the surface, and transferred about 4 oz of the Golden from the surface of the Golden primary directly into the scotch. I also did my best to get at least a small amount of oxygen into solution without contaminating the batch.

So - was what I did completely insane? What are the odds that the abbey yeast will be able to finish the fermentation?

 

[BierMuncher]

72% attenuation isn't too shabby for an extract brew.

Maybe the added yeast will do a little more work, but it's likely your fermentables are all used up.

Give that big@ss beer another 2-3 weeks and make sure the temp is at least 68.

I'm sure the addition of a golden strong yeast slurry will not hurt anything at all.

A good rule for big beers is leaving it in the primary for at least 3 weeks. Many folks go much longer than that.

 

[deprogram]

72% attenuation isn't too shabby for an extract brew.

Maybe the added yeast will do a little more work, but it's likely your fermentables are all used up.

I just felt like a lot of the invert sugar was remaining and needed to be gone for me to be happy. Figured the abbey yeast would be good for that.

Give that big@ss beer another 2-3 weeks and make sure the temp is at least 68.

I'm sure the addition of a golden strong yeast slurry will not hurt anything at all.

A good rule for big beers is leaving it in the primary for at least 3 weeks. Many folks go much longer than that.

I know, and my mistake was listening to the physical person I talked to and not the myriad people online who counseled me to primary for a month or longer. I know better now. I just left the shop in a panic with visions of autolysis dancing in my head (I'm new at this stuff). I'm not sure when, if ever, I'll secondary again - it was a logistical nightmare of potential contamination as far as I'm concerned. The beers I brew are big enough it seems the yeast would have great difficulty running out of nutrients before dying of natural causes. Clarity is not a huge concern of mine.

 

[deprogram]

Wanted to post a followup.

Kegged the damn thing today, and after force carbonation and chilling it's starting to taste like beer. It's funny, if the final gravity changed, I couldn't detect it - still seems stuck around 1.025 - but the cloying sweetness of the scotch has been replaced by dry, fusel alcohol notes. I think I prefer it this way. The abbey yeast is very noticeable, so fermentation must have taken place.

It now tastes like a strong ale - a really strong ale. But a trappist ale. Like a mad scottish brewer went across the English channel and brewed a traditional scotch with his yeast, and finished with theirs...

The beer's not ruined by any means. It's different, and could probably do with a great deal of aging.

Status: recommended. If you're crazy, like me, anyway, and don't mind your scotch ale tasting like it had intimate relations with a Belgian strong ale. If you're a traditionalist, don't do what I did!

 

[sammy_oz]

You're probably not too crazy. Wyeast Labs actually list their Belgian Abby Ale II as a possible yeast for Strong Scotch Ale fermentation:

Wyeast Laboratories. Strong Scotch Ale

 

[SumnerH]

72% attenuation isn't too shabby for an extract brew.

True, though if there are a lot of simple sugars like that invert sugar then it wouldn't be unusual for it to ferment out a bit better.

A good rule for big beers is leaving it in the primary for at least 3 weeks. Many folks go much longer than that.

Definitely. I'm in the middle of a (extract) BDSA that wasn't quite as big (1.085 OG). Within hours of pitching the lid was almost blown off, and it went gangbusters for 2-3 days before calming down. After a week it appeared to be done by the airlock, but the hydrometer told another story.

After 10 days it was at 1.022; after 15 days it was at 1.014. That's 83.5% attenuation if it stops there, but it took more than 2 weeks in primary and it's got a lot of simple sugars.