Help me identify my beer.

[wolfej50]

I stumbled onto a recipe by serendipitous accident. So I'm trying to identify the 'style'. I intended to make a saisson, but when I got home I realized I had the wrong yeast. So, here is the grain bill for a 5 gal batch:
10 lbs pale malt 2 row
9.6 oz Caramel 20L
2 oz Hersbrucker (60 min) (2% alpha)
1 oz Hersbrucker (10 min) (2% alpha)
1 package Windsor yeast

est OG 1.056 (actual was about 1.080 with some extra grains)
est FG 1.010
est ABV 6%
est IBU 28
est color 6.4 SRM

I'm thinking some type of blond ale, but I'd appreciate the wisdom of you experts.
BTW, I did a few things to boost my efficiency since the first 'accident' my OG was low. These include:
1. Boosting grain bill by about 10%
2. Added juice from 1 lemon to lower pH to strike water
3. BIAB for 90 minutes, stirring at 30 and 60 min
4. Pouring back the first couple of gallons of wort into mash tun (5 gal cooler)
5. Using two boil pots: 4 gal (primary for hops) and 2 gal
6. Leaving sparge water in for 10 minutes before extracting additional wort.
In the end, my total post-boil volume was about 4 gal. After topping off, I still had an OG of about 1.080, however, as that was pulled from the bottom via a spigot, the solids that came with the sample may have pumped that up. Next time I don't think I need to bump the grain bill.

 

[BreezyBrew]

This looks like a nice ordinary bitter recipe, except at 1.080 it's not going to be bitter at all. On my system, just the opposite.

 

[wolfej50]

Thanks, Breezy. Note that Hersbrucker has a fairly low Alpha at about 2% as listed on the packet. So, despite the use of 2 oz for bittering, the expected IBU is still fairly low.

 

[m00ps]

agree, its definitely similar to an English style ESB. Windsor can leave the beer with a great malty body, but its attenuation is very low IME

 

[kh54s10]

English pale ale or English extra pale ale. Strong one!

 

[btbnl]

Your grain bill doesn't have enough sugar for an OG of 1.080 in a 5G batch even at 100% efficiency, but 80% efficiency would give you exactly that in 4G so your sample was indeed unmixed.

80% efficiency would imply an OG of about 1.063 in 5G, and at 70-75% attenuation an FG of 1.016-1.019 and an ABV of 5.75-6.15%.

With your hop schedule I'm also getting about 20 IBU rather than 30, so your bitterness to gravity ratio is pretty low at about 0.3.

Overall, too much gravity and too little bitterness (and color) for an ESB. Too much gravity (O and F), but the right bitterness and color for a classic Blonde ... maybe call it a Double Blonde!

 

[wolfej50]

Thanks, btgnl. Double Blonde it is. I think you're right that the top off water probably wasn't mixed, especially since I pulled the sample from the bottom. In addition, there was a LOT of sediment still swirling around in the sample, which may have been a factor as well. I'm hoping the actual OG was closer to 1.060 (or lower) as I didn't use a high gravity yeast. All calculations are from BeerSmith, however, I didn't change the formulation to account for the 'higher' efficiency. One of the changes I'll make next time is to siphon off the wort into the fermenter rather than dumping everything, including the gunk on the bottom of the boil pot. Unfortunately, that prevents spashingI use a hand mixer for aeration, so oxygen for the yeast shouldn't be a problem. I tend not to like a lot of hop bittering in my beers, but you gotta have some to balance the malt.

 

[wolfej50]

Today was bottling day. Not sure FG should be taken before or after adding priming sugar, but with the priming sugar, by FG measured about 1.024 and the taste was a bit sweet. One concern is that if the yeast has already reached it alcohol tolerance, there won't be any carbonating fermentation. I agree that the OG was probably closer to 1.063 than 1.080, but higher than 1.063. A couple things I'll do differently next time is to keep to the original grain bill and buy a high gravity yeast in case the OG is higher than target.

 

[btbnl]

The Windsor yeast should be able to get you down to 1.016-ish. FG should be taken before priming, but that shouldn't add more than a point or two.

How did you know fermentation was done? Given your question about FG, I'm guessing you didn't take readings on consecutive days to check it had finished.

Also, given the previous issue, are you sure the priming sugar was fully mixed in before you took the FG reading?

 

[schematix]

Sounds like it's going to be syrup. Make up a batch of pancakes and enjoy.

 

[wolfej50]

btnbl, wrt to mixing the priming sugar, my technique is to dissolve sugar in boiling water than pour into the bottling bucket before racking the beer using a tube attached to a valve on the fermenting bucket. So, I'm pretty sure the priming sugar is mixed well. wrt to knowing that fermenting is done, I saw some active bubbling a couple of days after setting the fermenting bucket aside. After a day or so, I didn't see any discernable bubbling. So either fermenting completed due to the alcohol tolerance of the yeast or the fermenting got stuck. 1.024 is higher than I'd like and I'm sure those who favor hoppier beers would shun it, but I think it may be ok for me. wrt the yeast, my understanding is that yeast could stop fermenting when the maltose runs out (the normal, ideal situation) or when the alcohol gets too high. Since my FG is higher than the 1.010 or so I would have expected, I'm thinking the second given Windsor's low to mid attenuation. I think I need to purchase and store a variety of yeasts (low and high attenuation) for these situations. Live and learn.

 

[bragona71]

Bubbling means nothing! it can ferment with no bubbles or can not ferment with tons of bubbles, I have had great attenuation with a airlock that didn't bubble at all, I was concerned but let it ride 2 weeks and hit(or close to) FG. Many will tell you the same. So if it was not done and you added priming sugar you could have effectively made bottle bombs!

 

[wolfej50]

Given that fermentation produces CO2 by necessity, the only way for there not to be any bubbling is if the lid to the fermenter had a loose seal or bubbling was so slow that the bubbles were just missed. Given that I did see bubbling indicates that at least some fermentation was taking place. I think I'm on pretty good ground assuming that something stopped the fermentation and since FG was above target, it wasn't because there wasn't any more fermentable sugar. (That may have been the case if mash temp was high, but it wasn't). My hypothesis is that, regardless of priming sugar, I'm still going to have flat beer. But, just in case something else is going on, I'll open a bottle mid-way through the bottle conditioning stage (one week). If the beer has a lot of pressure, then I'll probably have to dump the bottles, or rebottle.