Sweet beer with low FG, what gives? Options

[sirwillliam]

I have a christmas ale on tap that has an FG of 1.010, but still tastes cloyingly sweet. I fermented two pounds of honey in secondary, which I would suspect is the culprit as I have never experienced this before, and this is my first time using honey. Does anyone have experience with this? Heres my recipe:

10 lbs two-row
2 lbs flaked barley
.75 lbs crystal 75
.15 lb chocolate malt
2 lbs honey (secondary)

1 oz cascade (7%) 60 min
.5 oz cascade 15 min

orange zest in secondary

us-05 yeast, mash ~152*

[Rog]

I've never used honey in the secondary before when I was doing extract I use honey in the boil so I would say yes out of gut instinct however I could be wrong but sounds to me like your suspicions are right!

[slothrob]

A few things come to mind:

-Are you sure your hydrometer is correct.

-Are your Cascades really 7%? That's pretty high for Cascades.

-Even so, 33 IBUs is on the low side for what probably started as a 1.080+ beer. For comparison, a Premium American Lager might have 20 IBUs in a 1.050 beer. In both cases, the IBU:GU ratio is about 0.4, and an American Lager isn't exactly a bitter beer. A more balanced beer, like a Pale Ale would have an IBU:GU ratio of about 0.7 and even a more malty beer, like an American Amber would still be around 0.6.

I might have bittered this this beer with more like 50 IBU. Remember, the Honey is basically sugar and will ferment nearly completely. This will mean it's adding mostly just alcohol to the final beer. This will make the hydrometer reading misleading, because it will seem like your beer had almost 90% attenuation. Because the alcohol is less dense than the beer, and the alcohol is high, however, it's covering up the fact that the original sugar in the beer attenuated less than 70%. If you hadn't added the honey, the final gravity of your beer would be 1.020. That's pretty sweet.

This post has been edited by slothrob: Nov 7 2009, 01:42 PM

[Rog]

So how long did you primary your wort for and how long has it been in the secondary for? Is it possible that maybe it was in the primary long enough for alot of the yeast to fall out and not in the secondary that long for the honey to completely ferment out so now you have a pretty sweet beer? I'm just guessing here and maybe I'm completely off base but that would be my guess. Also I totaly agree with slothrob as you probably under hoped this beer. I'm guessing your OG was around 1.060 though maybe a little lower!

[Thorhale]

maybe your hydro is wrong.. maybe not. If this were my problem, I would just pitch some more dry yeast in there. Either way, you have lots of time to let it ferment out. Honey is 100% fermentable so it should not cause this issue for you.

[sirwillliam]

I'm pretty sure the fermentation was complete, as it had a vigorous fermentation with about a month in primary and two weeks in secondary before I cold crashed for a week and then kegged. It's still a pretty young beer, but I don't think this characteristic will age out. Maybe I could make about a gallon of bitter, dark beer and add this to the keg. Hopefully it would end up like a dark brown ale.

[sirwillliam]

I'm thinking of adding the following 1 gal batch to this beer:

1 lb DME, us-05

Steep:
.2 lb chocolate malt
.2 lb black malt
.1 lb black patent
1 lb melanoidin (maybe not, I just feel the need for some munich flavor with my dark grains)

Boil: 1 oz cascade 30 min

This should contribute another 20 IBUs to the final mixture of beers, while lowering the FG and providing some darkness to balance the sweet, since I don't think the bitterness alone will solve the problem.

[BobH]

I'm thinking of adding the following 1 gal batch to this beer:

1 lb DME, us-05

Steep:
.2 lb chocolate malt
.2 lb black malt
.1 lb black patent
1 lb melanoidin (maybe not, I just feel the need for some munich flavor with my dark grains)

Boil: 1 oz cascade 30 min

This should contribute another 20 IBUs to the final mixture of beers, while lowering the FG and providing some darkness to balance the sweet, since I don't think the bitterness alone will solve the problem.

I get the 1 Oz. addition for 30 min will add only 6 IBU. putting it all in Promash. For 30 min you are not going to get the bitterness that 60 min does.
Do 3/4 Oz. for 60 min and 3/4 at 30 min to get closer to the 20 IBU addition. Then toss the leftover 1/2 in the keg.

[TheProfessor]

I would leave the beer alone.

If it started out at around 1.080, it probably would have benefitted from more secondary time. But even if not, the beer is just too young to judge.
Tradition aside, experience shows that a beer this big needs some age on it to get its flavors together. This beer...without any changes to it other than aging...could prove to be a masterpiece.
I say give it a chance. Like anything you read in these forums, you need to try it...then you'll know for sure if it applies to your tastes. You shouldn't take my (or anyone else's) word for it.

I know full well that I'm probably in the minority here, but when I make beers like this one (with a hopping rate not too far off from what the OP describes) I wouldn't even think of consuming it for 6 or 8 months...and really it would be at its best after a year or more. I'm not into the "seasonal drinking" thing so that's why I do a few batches a year...so I always have some around that has aged sufficiently whenever I feel like having it. Just takes a bit of planning ahead.

You can't rush the big beers. Correction: you can, but the results generally speaking won't be as satisfying.

This factor is one of the things sorely lacking in many commercial examples of 'big' beers, and with patience, it's one of the things that homebrewers can definitely do better than their commercial counterparts.

[sirwillliam]

Thanks for all the advice guys. Ideally, I would leave it alone and see how it ages, but I will be having family visiting over the holidays and this beer will be drunk by late december regardless of how appealing it is. As far as the IBUs on the planned addition to the beer, I used Glenn Tinseth's equation for 5 gallons of 1.040 wort, which gave me 20.3 IBUs.

I did bottle six of these beers, so I will be able to see how they age. Does anyone have other suggestions for my addition?

[Mead Guy From MD]

Well I get a starting gravity of about 1.067. That aside, I use honey, a lot. Typically I use 2-3lbs at flame out and get the character I am looking for. If you added 3lbs in secondary, you just added 25pts almost directly to your final gravity. After 1 month the yeast is about done working. Also, the US-05 is (IMHO) going to need a starter for beers over 1.050 ish, I prolly would have gone that route. I may have overlooked your pitching method, but if you just mixed it with warm water and tossed it in, you probably left a bunch of viable yeast sleeping in the primary. If you can, I would pitch a second packet.
~Phillip

[malkore]

i'm kinda with mead guy here...3lbs of honey is a reasonable amount that should dry out the beer as much as 3lbs of corn sugar (assuming it all fermented). honey should ferment completely if the yeast can handle the ABV.

honey can be a pain to ferment...adding it to already tired yeast, and removing most of the yeast...I think you still could drop several gravity points at this time. honey has little nitrogen to help the yeast ferment.

is it still a bit heavy on the body too? sweet and heavy at 1.010 just tells me there's probably 9 or 10 points to lose still.

[sirwillliam]

It is still a bit heavy on the body, but I am hesitant to pitch more yeast as I am fairly certain it is done and it is already cold, carbed, and clean.

Since I have a few bottled, wouldn't I expect bottle bombs if there were 9 to 10 points left to lose? The bottles have been carbing for over 2 weeks now, and the yeast has already dropped nicely. I will give one of these a test after chilling for a couple of days and see if I get a gusher or not.

Would the absence of an overcarbed bottle necessarily indicate that the rest of the beer is fully fermented? I am inclined to think so. I will report back around Sunday.

I just remembered, I did add some krausen from a pale ale when I added the honey, and it wasn't actually in the secondary. I did the honey addition in the primary, after the initial fermentation had been done for a while. Sorry for neglecting that part. (IMG:style_emoticons/brewboard/biggrin.gif)

[DavidS]

If you need to add some more bitterness to help balance it out, make a 1 gallon batch with some DME and use a french press to extract the resins and boil for 60 min down to 1/2 gallon and add. That should help you add some IBUs.