My son and I brewed a Belgian Trappist beer, it’s a dubbel. We did a secondary ferment for almost 6 months to condition. The beer is a disappointment. When I taste it, the initial flavor makes you think it is gonna be good, but it does not travel. It immediately disappears and leave a completely unsatisfied feeling. Is there anyway to improve it? It is kegged and in my keezer. Could I add anything after the fact? I hate to dump 5 gallons, and at this point I don’t want to drink it.
In my experience, adding a cover-up to bad beer doesn’t work out. It ends up being bad beer with… bla bla cover-up
Well that sucks. Unfortunately there isn’t really any way to save it this time but let’s fix it for the next time!
The main problem I see is that you aged it for 6 months in a secondary. Secondaries are not a great option unless you can purge the secondary of oxygen first, otherwise you will oxidize the beer. And 6 months is crazy long aging for this style. 4-6 weeks is plenty. If you want to age it, bottle it and store it cold. This beer style does actually age well for up to about 1 year, but not much past that.
Something I should have posted in my response to “what you wish you knew when you started:” never be afraid or ashamed to dump beer. Nothing compels you to drink anything you don’t want to. Chalk it up to experience, learn what you can, cut your losses, and move on.
Try dry hopping it or adding spice. The beer may not become good or great, but you’ll learn something about that hop or spice.
Thanks for the encouragement…to dump ;). I knew that may be the best option…that or donate it to Goodwill. We did purge for the secondary, put it in a 5 gallon corny and purge with CO2. I don’t bottle, just keg. I was even wondering if I took it off the tap and aged it another 6 months in the basement if it might help. I even wondered if I could add a fifth of vodka or rum or something to boost the ABV and “pretend” it is a stronger beer. Might be worth a bottle…
I agree with this and would add that bottle conditioning helps if aging for some time.
I read that some say to never give up on a beer. I recently read that a beer judge (once he’s completed his flight) combines blah beers (aka the losers) with the other blah beers to get a pretty good drinkable beer. Possibly you can blend it with something on hand or brew something to blend it with to save it.
On the other hand, “Don’t Cling to a Mistake Just Because You Spent a lot of Time Making it.” — Aubrey De Graf
The perennial statement - life is too short. Dump and rebrew.
What’s the pH? I’m guessing it’s just oxidized, which you can’t fix at this point. I’ve also heard of people altering the chemistry in the packaged beer (lactic acid, calcium chloride, etc). If you’re going to dump it, might as well experiment.
Not sure how it would be oxidized when I purged the tank with CO2 on secondary. Something else I am missing?
This is a deep topic but all purging isn’t created equal. Can you define what you mean by purged? There are a number of methods people use to “purge” vessels, and most of them are not adequate. Can you post what you did for critique?
After we brewed we aerated. Then purged the ferment vessel with CO2 and racked the beer to it. Then, did the same thing when transferring it for secondary to a 5 gallon Korny keg - used a CO2 tank with nozzle and filled the tank with CO2, then racked the beer. Then attached the CO2 tank to keg and purged again and let it set on secondary in my basement at approximately 65 degrees.
It doesn’t sound like you actually purged the keg of O2. In order to do this, you need to completely fill the keg with liquid (e.g. sanitizer) and then use CO2 on the gas side to push the liquid out a tap on the liquid side. Now the only thing in the keg is CO2. Then you want to use CO2 pressure to push beer from the fermenter (without opening it and allowing air in) into the keg through the liquid side, pushing the gas out the PRV or the gas side. Any other procedure essentially guarantees oxidation.
As Big Monk said, this is a deep topic, but the above is the simple fact of what works. There are many pervasive homebrew myths about other ways to “purge” vessels, but they are based on notions of gases stratifying, displacing each other, and so on that simply aren’t how things work as governed by the laws of physics and chemistry (Dalton’s and Henry’s Laws in particular.) For more detailed discussion, start with http://www.lowoxygenbrewing.com/brewing-methods/kegging-care-guide-purging-transferring-stabilizing-finished-beer/
Well said Rob and that’s exactly where I was going.
I would try adding half a fifth of Gosling’s or Myers dark rum.
My plan for beers like this is to prime with sugar. This will help eat some of the O2 in the keg. It isn’t as good as spunding, but quite an improvement over force carbonating IMO.
Can you put into words what you think is lacking or how you want the beer to taste? Also what were the starting and finishing gravities?