Suggestions for a 1.140 OG wort?

[aurelius121ad]

Do I have any options or is this batch destined for the drain? Here's the story of me going for something along the lines of an American IPA.

I bought and used 3kg of this Chinese liquid malt that says it is a combination of barley and rice malt (percentage of each is not known). I figured I would tell beersmith it is half barley and half rice making a brew up to 18 L and adding 400g of brown sugar for color. Beersmith estimated the OG at 1.059... but when all was said and done I measured an OG of 1.140! How was I to know this stuff was THAT heavy!

The fermenter has been in a water bath with ice that fluctuates between 19* and 25*. I dont have any means to measure the temp of the brew itself and I know it should be more consistent but thats the best I can do, it is really hot and humid here.

Last night at 13 days of fermentation I checked the gravity and came up with 1.045 giving me an ABV of 12.6%. It is still very hazy and tasted yeasty, very bitter due to the hops, but also still sweet. Sounds incomplete to me with the yeast stuck due to the high alc %.

So now what can I do?

1. Toss it and start over keeping an eye on my OG.
2. Rack it and see if that kick starts the yeast again then checking the gravity and maybe decide to bottle in PET
3. Dilute it
4. Pitch a Coopers kit yeast
5. ?????????
7. Some combination of the above
8. Wait a few more days then decide on one of the above options



For the record the yeast is Safbrew S-33 ("can ferment up to 11.5%") and the hops schedule is as follows:

25.00 gm Target [11.00%] (60 min) Hops 37.6 IBU
15.00 gm Ahtanum [6.00%] (25 min) Hops 8.5 IBU
15.00 gm Ahtanum [6.00%] (15 min) Hops 6.1 IBU
10.00 gm Ahtanum [6.00%] (5 min) Hops 1.6 IBU

[homebrewer79]

If the alc % is too much for the yeast you could prolly try racking and finishing off with a champaign yeast, if you can get your hands on it over there.

[aurelius121ad]

Thats what I immediately thought of... but alas, Champagne yeast isnt something I can just walk into the supermarket and buy over here.

I had no idea the malt was that heavy when I started. Then when I took the initial reading I thought it may have loads of non fermentables in it... I guess that was wrong! I am starting to think this brew may be a lost cause.

[homebrewer79]

Maybe if you rack into 2 seperate fermenters and dilute each one to give you half the alc %, but that might stuff your hoppy goodness, I dunno

[KEG]

very "experimental", but you could rack a litre off into a 2 or 3L PET bottle, add a proportion of water (maybe 30-50% of the total), and use glad wrap and a rubber band instead of an airlock. you'd have to be careful not to aerate, but after a few more days you should get a rough idea of how it'd work out... it'd most likely improve with age.

[aurelius121ad]

I am glad to see that no one is telling me that this dilution idea is a horrible one. It just may work but I dont think i would want to go through the effort of doing it 2-3 liters at a time. I might as well just do it to half the batch.

I guess now I risk doubling the amount of a brew that may be hard to get rid of!

I just wanted to get some opinions before I make a decision. I am looking at either diluting it or tossing it now.

[PaulSteele]

My guess would be that there is something in the extract that you've got that is hanging around in there throwing off your hydrometer.

i'd try using a fining agent in secondary and then checking the SG, or just cool it right down to try and clear it.

maybe they leave a lot of impurities in their extract.

[KEG]

My guess would be that there is something in the extract that you've got that is hanging around in there throwing off your hydrometer.

my initial thought was also that there's a lot of unfermentables in that malt because of the high FG, but comparing OG to FG, 1.140 to 1.045 is equivalent to say a 1.100 brew (eg a strong barleywine) making it down to 0.995 - that stuff is still very fermentable!

on the topic of unfermentables in the malt keeping the FG high aurelius, perhaps next time you could try boiling all the malt if you haven't yet, to try and get any proteins to form into 'break' material, which will mostly drop out.

[Lachy]

I still reckon that OG sounds ridiculously high... even if using a dry extract, or even pure dextrose, I struggle to see how you'd get an OG that high with that sort of quantity of fermentables in 18l.

I'm truly dumbfounded.

[aurelius121ad]

Yeah, I have been a bit dumbfounded too. I have never brewed abroad either so I dont know what proper unhopped malt looks like.

I definitly have some new methods to try for the next batch. Not as much malt for starters but as KEG said a full boil could help. I guess I have to go make a copper wort chiller now!

I think a more vigorous boil would help too. This one was barely rolling. My propane tank was almost out when I brewed and I didnt want to run out mid boil so i used the electric hotplate. It isnt even just a little bit cloudy, it is completely opaque but also very light in color.

I think I have settled on a solution... rack out and dump 30% of the brew and then replace that with water. It hurts to throw it out but I'm going to chalk this batch up as a learning experience, the chance of it finishing up as a great brew is pretty slim.

Wait a minute... I will take another hydro reading and taste to see what I think of the alcohol content. My previous batch (Coopers Dark kit with a kilo of this malt and 400g of brown sugar) gave me an OG of around 1.120. That one ended up with an FG of 1.030, which is high bit it is definitly finished. It is at 3-4 weeks in the bottle and has the exact amount of carbonation I would expect from what I primed with.

Maybe this stuff has a lot of extra crap in it that throws my hydro readings like Paulsteele says. As it sits more of it comes out of suspension making me think the ABV is much higher than it actually is.

I guess now I have to decide to get rid of some of it and dilute or just bottle with a few PETs thrown in the mix to check carbonation levels before I end up with bombs!

[James L]

if you assume that yeast will attenutate 70-80% of the sugar in the beer, if the SG was 1140, and it is 70% attenutated, then the FG will be 1042, if the yeast attenuated 80% the FG will be 1028...

Also if it is still cloudy and yeasty, then i would expect that it hasnt quite finished yet...