Hitting FG on a high OG beer

[ryanhope]

Last night I brewed my first beer. It was a high all grain beer with a high OG, trying for a Oskar Blues GUBNA clone. I used 2 packets of Safale US-05 (hydrated) prior to pitching which happened around 7pm last night. I'm starting to see krausen form in my fermenter so it looks like everything is off to a good start. For reasons I not going to waste time explaining here, my mash temps might have gotten higher than I wanted so I'm worried about complex sugars affecting my ability to hit my FG. Does anyone have tips that I can do to help me hit my FG. I read that once the yeast starts to flocculate I should agitate to get the yeast back into suspension. Anything else I can do?

 

[mattd017]

Last night I brewed my first beer. It was a high all grain beer with a high OG, trying for a Oskar Blues GUBNA clone. I used 2 packets of Safale US-05 (hydrated) prior to pitching which happened around 7pm last night. I'm starting to see krausen form in my fermenter so it looks like everything is off to a good start. For reasons I not going to waste time explaining here, my mash temps might have gotten higher than I wanted so I'm worried about complex sugars affecting my ability to hit my FG. Does anyone have tips that I can do to help me hit my FG. I read that once the yeast starts to flocculate I should agitate to get the yeast back into suspension. Anything else I can do?

Tip #1: Let the beer do it's thing. How high OG? Original Gubna is about 1.100, right? I'd let it sit for about a month on the primary before even taking a look at the OG. A few hours high temp isn't necessarily a bad thing with a beer that big, it'll give your yeast a bit of time to get rolling. Just maintain a good temp from now on.

Edit: Just realized I read that wrong. You'll probably never get it down to the intended FG. You'll have more unfermentable starches and sugars, so your beer will be a little more full than what you intended. But it'll still be drinkable. Rousing the yeast won't do much, they can't ferment what they can't ferment, no matter how long they stay in contact with it.

 

[dcp27]

how much higher of temps did you get?

3711 is even more of a beast than S-05 so that could help a lil, maybe 099 too. otherwise, if you end up way too high, adding amylase, beano, or brettanomyces are about your only options to reduce the FG after the fact.

 

[ryanhope]

I really don't know what my mash temps were because I thought I could get away with using my kitchen IR thermometer to monitor the mash temp. That was my first mistake. I know that my strike water was the right temp when I added it as my boil kettle (which I used to heat the strike water) has a brewometer. However, after I added the grain to the water and stirred for a few min I took a temp reading with the IR and it was only in the 120. Needless to say I freaked out and after I calmed down I decided to take out a few gallons, heat it up to high 160s then added it back. I then realized I could take my brewometer off the kettle to measure the mash temp. After a little stirring the top 3" or so of the mash was reading ~152 so I have to imagine that means that the mash was hotter torwards the middle and bottom. I tried to stir the mash often but in the end. I really don't have a good idea of what my mash temps were.

 

[craigkelker]

you'll want to get a better grasp of your temperature loss. Ie, my cooler will hold temp for 1 hr, so I don't need to do any decotions.

 

[ryanhope]

you'll want to get a better grasp of your temperature loss. Ie, my cooler will hold temp for 1 hr, so I don't need to do any decotions.

Well in the future I will have a dedicated real thermo for the mash tun. Actually, I plan on building an electric RIMS heater (since I already have a pump) but that is a different issue. I mainly want to know if in 3-4 weeks when I check the FG before racking to secondary to dry hop, if I find that my FG is higher than I would like, is there anything I can add that will break down complex sugars into simple so that yeast can then ferment them. Maybe an amylase enzyme as previously suggested?

 

[eastoak]

Maybe an amylase enzyme as previously suggested?

don't do that. if you do a search for amylase on these boards you'll find a few threads where people are asking for help stopping the enzyme, and can't without heating up the beer to denature the enzyme. chances are your beer will be fine anyway. without recirculating your mash it's harder to maintain a constant temp throughout the mash tun. had to taken the temp with an accurate thermometer throughout the mash tun you would have had quite a range of temps. the enzymatic reactions in the mash do not occur instantly so a spike in temps for a short while does not matter.

 

[craigkelker]

here is a great resource on unfermentable sugar: http://www.brewery.org/brewery/library/enzymes595.html

 

[dcp27]

don't do that. if you do a search for amylase on these boards you'll find a few threads where people are asking for help stopping the enzyme, and can't without heating up the beer to denature the enzyme.

you'll also find a few where it saved a beer. i doubt it'll be the case in this, but it's not a bad last ditch effort if something ends up undrinkably high. FWIW, in the few instances I've used it it never went too low.

 

[ryanhope]

Thanks guys. Guess I will just let this go for a month and not worry about it. Chalk up everything to a learning experience.