Wow. This is why I should never post on my phone. What.The. Hell?
I think it is weird that my experience is so much difference than some others on this board. But every time I have added sugar near the end of fermentation I have gotten much lower AA. I actually I prefer my current method of adding sugar at beginning of boil before first hops go in, mainly because it’s a PITA to add sugar post boil. But the attenuation I have gotten from the late feeding has always blown me away.
As the Denster would recommend “try it for yourself and see”.
Your findings make sense because adding sugar later in the fermentation lowers the initial osmotic pressure delta between the inside and the outside of the cell walls.
This is an interesting thread. I think many of us have heard of the idea that for super-high gravity beers (Samichlas, 120-minute IPA, etc.), in order to get the ABV way up there then you can use incremental feeding of sugar additions late in fermentation in order to really push the yeast to their limit. OTOH, many of us have noticed no difference between adding simple sugars in the boil versus adding them after primary has slowed down.
Major’s results from his tripel is making it seem like maybe there is a gradual slope between the moderate gravity beers where late sugar additions seem to have little effect (if any), to the super high-gravity brews where it is a requirement. Somewhere in the middle, it seems like there’s a point where late additions start to make more and more of a difference in attenuation.
This would be a cool experiment for an AHA grant. Compare 20% or so of the grist in table sugar added in the boil vs after primary slows down. You could try it at varying gravities to see if there’s a difference in attenuation, how much it is, and if the difference changes as gravity increases.
That’s entirely possible, and I won’t refute your experience. I just haven’t seen the need for the extra work to gain a couple of gravity points.
I checked my last two batches that had significant sugar additions. One an old ale and the other a saison.
I know saison yeasts are their own world, so maybe not 100% applicable but the old ale was fermented with Notty/Windsor. Saison went from 1.064 to 1.004 which i am happy with. The old ale attenuated further than i wanted or expected and went from 1.094 to 1.008. Both batches had cane sugar at 16% of the recipe by Beersmith 2 calculations. I’m not looking for more attenuation, and in the case of the old ale I would have preferred less.
After looking at my notes, I’ve actually done incremental feeding three times. The first 2 times (tripel 1.008 FG, quad 1.012FG) weren’t much out of line with what I had gotten with sugars in the boil. I used 3787 on both of these. But the third time was last year when I made the 3724 saison fermented at 90F per the Wyeast info sent to Amanda. That one hit 1.006 in 8 days, 1.002 FG in 12 days. I attributed this performance to the warmer fermentation temps, deservedly so to a big extent. But every other saison I’d made with 3724 finished 1.004-1.006. So with this strain, I feel the low mash temp (147-148F), warm fermentation, and incremental feeding might be part of the puzzle to getting the strain to attenuate well AND quickly. WY1762 (my favorite for Dubbel and Quad) seems like another strain that might benefit from incremental feeding, as it occasionally finishes a tad higher than I want, in spite of grist and mash temp changes. Think I’ll revisit the idea. Good thread.
To be clear, I get my Tripel dry enough by adding the sugars to the boil. But incremental feeding definitely will get your beer drier, at least in my experience.
