What should I do differently?

[SMOKEU]

What should I do differently when brewing a high OG extract beer compared to brewing a low OG beer? Other than adding more fermentable sugars (obviously!) and pitching more yeast, what other things should I do?

 

[weirdboy]

You'll probably want to condition it for a longer time.

And if you're talking about in terms of recipes, you'll want to add more hops to balance out the added malt/sugar.

 

[ChshreCat]

Make sure you use a yeast that can attenuate to the range you want.

 

[Revvy]

You'll probably want to condition it for a longer time.

That's the biggest thing....My 1.090 belgian strong took 3 months to carb and after 6 months it still tasted like rocket fuel. So the biggest thing to realize, is that the bigger the beer the longer it will take...In terms of Barleywines think a year minimum...

IN terms of fermenting big beers, you really need to over pitch...This is a good pitch rate calculator.

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

You might find these articles helpful, the first one is from the Maltose Falcons, who are brewing legends.

http://www.maltosefalcons.com/tech/thinking-big-getting-handle-brewing-big-beers

http://beerdujour.com/Howtobrewabigbeer.htm

 

[SMOKEU]

Should I also shake the fermenter up periodically during the first few days of fermentation to aerate it?

 

[Revvy]

Should I also shake the fermenter up periodically during the first few days of fermentation to aerate it?

There's some discussion on this, from the manufactureres.....BUT my recollection of it is that you do a second aeration (easier with O2 and a stone) At no more than 12 hours after yeast pitch. AND NO MORE AFTER THAT WINDOW.

Once you have beer beginning to be converted from wort you don't want to give it more air exposure, you don't want to doom your beer to being wet cardboard. Especially since oxidation issue are late onset ones, and you are going to need to store this for awhile, so you don't want to have your beer potentionally already oxidyzed.

 

[Tilldeath]

not to high jack this thread, but I have a maple porter I did some bad calculations on, long story short it ended 1.098 I under pitched on dry yeast because of this by quite a bit but since it's been about 9-10 days the general consensus is not to add more yeast since the alcohol will be to high for survivability(sp?). My question however is it is still got airlock activity and while I don't mind it does seem a little longer than I expected, what should I be looking at as far as FG and how long should I secondary it for, thinking like 3 weeks, followed by another 3-4 weeks in bottles. Any thoughts on what the final product might be like? FYI yeast was Safale US-05. thx