Too much sugar?..

[manateerichard]

Hello all, beginner brewer here, and the mistake I made is going to highlight that point well. I was attempting to brew a Belgian Saison last night with a 5 gallon recipe and I scaled everything down to a 1 gallon (which is the size I brew) and I screwed up and added the amount of dextrose for the full 5 gallon recipe to the boil. I wake up this morning to find my fermentation bubbling very very aggressively (using wyyeast 3711 which is a beast) and a blown airlock I accidentally have about 5 times the sugar called for floating around in there and this means about 30% of my fermentable mass is sugar. I've searched around about this topic and can only find stuff pertaining to the bottling/priming stage... And the little I could find suggests that the ABV is going to be a bit high :rockin: and some claims that a "cidery" taste will be there (which I'm skeptical about). For the question, is it worth forging on with the fermentation; do I need to adjust it (right now keeping around 80F and for another week or so)? And has anyone else made a similar mistake?

I mean it is a Belgian sour so some interesting flavors are too be expected, right? :beard:

 

[jekeane]

It's a gallon batch so there is no reason not to continue. If you added 1# to a 1 gallon batch then you would have numbed your OG by .046. Assuming the saison yeast does its thing it will be very very dry.

 

[evchenko]

It'll not be the beer you went for originally, but the cidery taste thing is mainly bunk. There's an Aussie guy who has made beers with a ridiculous percentage of sugar and has never reported this. Made a book called Bronzed Brews and was on the Basic Brewing podcast a few months back, worth a listen.

 

[redlich]

One of my first stouts had an OG at 1120 and in combination with an agressive yeast it caused a bit of overflow.
Now I always mount an overflow pipe when OG is over 1080.

How hish was your OG with all that sugar?

It turned out a great stout, but quite a mess to clean up.

 

[manateerichard]

The picture looks similar to what happened to mine Estimated pre-ferment OG is hovering around 1.089, if the yeast does its job I should be looking at a final of 1.022~ish.

 

[chickypad]

3711 with lots of the fermentables from sugar, I'd expect it's going to be a lot lower than 1.022. What was the whole recipe?

 

[manateerichard]

Finally the bubbling has stopped overflowing and I got a chance to clean it a bit, still smells really nice.
Next question, how long should I shoot for a fermentation time with the extra sugar? I'm hearing either 7~10 days or 14~20... Either way I was planing on giving it a long time (month plus) to sort itself after being bottled.

 

[m00ps]

A saison is not a sour style of beer. Unless you added bacteria or it got infected this wont be sour

 

[manateerichard]

1/2 lbs Vienna
1/2 lbs Wheat
0.66 lbs Liquid Malt (extra light)
0.6 lbs Dry Malt (extra light)
3/4 cup ~ 4.4 oz Dextrose (should have been 0.15 cups ~ 0.88 oz)

 

[chickypad]

Unless my math is wrong that's only about 12% sugar, 4.4 oz is actually a pretty piddling amt for a 5 gal batch so you're fine there. As m00ps said though this won't be a sour without souring agents.

 

[kh54s10]

You are going to end up with a very dry (little sweetness) beer. How dry, and what it will taste like is yet to be determined. I would go ahead with it but not have expectations that it is going to be great. Hopefully it will be fairly good.

Get another one going in case this one turns out to be a dumper.

 

[evchenko]

12% sugar in a Saison should be just fine TBH