I find that I have a high finishing specific gravity (SP). I recently brewed an IPA. Starting SG 1.080, finishing 1.020. I bottle conditioned the ale and the carbonation is good. My system is a recirculating heated mash. I started my mash at 140 degrees F and added White labs Ultra-Ferm. I held this for 20 minutes. Next the mash was ramped to 150 over the next hour. During the mash I stir the grains every 5 to 10 minutes. The mash was raised to 168 and fly sparged. After a 90 minute vigorous boil the wort was cooled and a 2L starter was pitched. The wort was oxygenated for 3 minutes with pure O2. I used a White Labs Cal ale yeast. The fermentation was quite active after 12 hours at the low end of the fermentation temperature or 68 degrees. I did a secondary fermentation after three days. The SG was still falling at that point. After the SG was stable for two days. I did a cold break for about a week.
The ale is good but too sweet. What suggestions do you have on getting a dryer beer? :-\
I don’t brew a lot of beers with that high SG, so maybe someone who does will have more insight.
However, you achieved 75% attenuation with that yeast. That’s acceptable using that yeast. Never used Ultra-Ferm myself, but understand from brewers I respect, you can increase the attenuation a few points by adding the Ultra-Ferm when pitching the yeast, instead of during the mash as you did.
BTW, it’s really good practice to add ample yeast nutrient for any wort above 1.060.
If your beer tastes that sweet to you, you may need to use a more attenuative yeast. For example, White Labs 715, Champagne yeast will ferment up to 100% attenuation, if that is what you’re after. Or White Labs 099, High Gravity Ale which routinely gets 80%.
3 notes…yeast attenuation ratings are a way of comparing one yeast to another and may or may not reflect your actual attenuation. And if your beer turns out too sweet often, then the obvious solution is to use more hops next time. Finally, if you intend to make an IPA at that strength, its a good idea to use a bit of sugar to dry it out.
Denny, I’m not following your logic on using sugar to dry out the beer. It seems to me if I’ve done a good job of starch to simple sugar conversion in the mash I have a simple sugar like corn sugar that the yeast can consume. In calculating my actual attenuation vs the “specs” for the ale yeast I used I was a bit low but within range. Seems like the yeast converted as much sugar as it could. My thought for next time is to start with my ale yeast and then finish with a champagne yeast to lower the sugar.
Your idea on adding hops IMHO is like adding sugar to strong coffee. It masks the bitter in the case of coffee or sweet in the case of my beer but the taste is still there. The ale I put up had 8 oz total hops for 5 gals. So I was happy with the hops flavor.
Adding sugar is pretty commonplace. You would use it to boost to your OG and since it’s like 99% fermentable or so, it will get your FG down there. Not having to rely on some of the malt sugars, etc. I would do it for all my DIPA’s back when I would brew them.
Depending on your grain bill, you may have some ingredients that are contributing to sweetness as well, like crystal malt. Even without crystal malt, beers with 1.080 starting gravities are hard to brew and not perceive sweetness.
Had you posted the recipe, you may have gotten more specific help, but what you’ve gotten was al quite sound.
A few facts to chew on:
Higher alcohol levels can actually contribute to sweetness.
Simple sugars are very close to, if not,100% fermentable, so they increase attenuation and dry the beer out
The same recipe brewed by different brewers will almost always produce different results, due to variations in their equipment and processes.
The most commonly used hop utilization models produce different results, none of which are likely to be accurate in prediction actual IBUs.
Hop perception varies from person to person.
Regardless of your process, different malts and adjuncts vary in fermentability.
And. the zinger: The recipe you brewed may have been a very sweet example of the style.
All good points. I would be interesting in seeing the recipe to determine if you have some unfermentables that are boosting the sweetness. Also, as Bob mentioned, higher alcohol also is also a contributing factor.
FWIW, I always add corn sugar (dextrose) to my IPA’s to dry them out a bit as I try to brew the west coast style (I am not into hazy IPA’s). I also mash at 148 for my Amarillo IPA and the ABV comes in around 6% or so and has a nice dry finish. It’s my wife’s go to beer.
DoubleJack 6 IPA
American IPA (14 B)
Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 5.0 gal
Ingredients
Amt Name
2.00 tsp Burton Water Salts (Mash 60.0 mins)
13 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Rahr 2 row
2 lbs Munich Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM)
2 lbs Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM)
1 lbs Carafoam (2.0 SRM)
10.00 ml White Labs Ultra Firm (Mash 60.0 mins)
1 lbs Corn Sugar (Dextrose) (0.0 SRM)
2.00 oz Magnum [12.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
2.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min
2.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 60.0 min
2.00 oz Citra [13.50 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 5.0 min
1.0 pkg German Lager (White Labs #WLP830) [35.49 ml]
2.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Dry Hop 0.0 Days
I grind all of my grains on brew day using a three roller mill set a bit tighter than the manufacturer recommends. I use charcoal filtered tap water. I pitched a 2L starter into wort that was oxygenated for 3 minutes fermented at 68 degrees.
To measure my OG and FG I use a hydrometer with the liquid temperature being about 68 degrees. I monitor my SG using a refractometer. I know I would need to convert my refractometer readings after fermentation starts.
One posting suggested using Ultra Firm. I used it in my mash. I started the mash at 140 per recommendations and held that temp for 20 minutes prior to ramping to 150 over an hour. So mash total time was about 1 hr 20 minutes.
Just to kick a bit more mud in the water, I’ll note the efficiency of my system / process is not very good. We are trying different things to address this but efficiency I would like to leave as a topic for another post.
Again thanks for all of the input. Please let me know if I can answer other questions.
Looking at your recipe, it looks like you just got what you got in terms of attenuation, which as other mention isn’t really off the mark. I do notice that you used German lager yeast, which is odd for an IPA. If I were to recommend anything, I’d cut the Munich and Vienna amounts in half and replace them with how ever much table sugar you’d need to hit your target OG.
Recipe is wrong. I used Whitelabs California Ale WLP001 not the german lager.
I’m going to try two things. I will pitch some champagne yeast in a couple of bottles to see if I can lower the SG. The next batch I brew in a week or so I’ll reduce the base malt and add sugar to get my OG. Cal Ale will be used again and depending on the champagne yeast experiment I’ll pitch the champagne yeast after I get a stable FG with the Cal Ale.
Same here. There’s not enough food, and too much alcohol for yeast to get started. A starter at high krausen might do something, but even then I doubt it qill do much to make the beer better.
Most attempts to “fix” a finished beer wind up making things worse. Even at 1.020 for FG, I can’t imagine the beer would be undrinkably sweet.
I’ve had some limited success ‘fixing’ beers to bring the rest of the keg into ‘ain’t bad’ territory but it never takes them into ‘that’s a good beer’ league.