Effects of bottle conditioning

sippyCUP · Jun 20, 2006

I've been brewing a nut brown ale for the last few weeks, it spent about 1.5 weeks in primary, 1 week in secondary, and I bottled last sunday so it's been a little over a week in bottles. I tasted one today and while the overall flavor was good, the body was thinner than I would have liked. What sort of changes can I expect from an additional week or so of conditioning, or will there not be much effect at all? I've read a little bit about using rye or oaks in the mash to increase viscosity but I was really curious about how salvagable this batch is :cross: .

clayof2day · Jun 20, 2006

If the flavor is good now, just give it time. It will only improve with age. Patience

Brewsmith · Jun 20, 2006

Now that it's in the bottle, there's not much that will change, or that you can do to affect the body. The flavor will improve, but the body is what it is. I believe that you can add malto-dextrine powder to a secondary to help with this problem. What was your recipe? Maybe we can figure out why it came out that way.

homebrewer_99 · Jun 20, 2006

You can use 1 oz of Malto Dextrin in the boil next time. You can actually add MD up to bottling.

I had a thin batch once that when I was boiling the priming sugar I added the MD to it at the same time.

sippyCUP · Jun 20, 2006

It was a northern brewer kit. I used those 5 of those gallon waters at the store, it was drinking water, not distilled. However, the bottled water had been "micron filtered" as I discovered on the label at the grocery today. I guess this could have removed enough minerals to harm the body of the beer.

Here's the ingredients of the kit:

* 0.25 lbs. Simpson's Chocolate
* 0.25 lbs. Dingemans Special B
* 0.25 lbs. Dingemans Biscuit
* 0.25 lbs. Briess Special Roast
6 lbs. Gold Malt Syrup
* 1 oz. Challenger (60 min)
* 1 oz. Fuggle (1 min)
Wyeast #1028 London Ale Yeast

Thanks in advance for your help!