Hey everyone, some-time lurker, first time poster. Like many delurkers, I finally registered because I need some advice... and everyone here is so smart! So without further ado:
I brewed a monster of a trippel earlier this month - it was largely based upon the "Tripel Around The World" recipe in Sam Calagione's "Extreme Brewing." I made it a little bigger, though: the OG after the boil was 1.108. Fermentation was blow-off-tube-vigorous, thanks to the massive starter of Wyeast 3787 (Trappist High Gravity) I made.
The recipe calls for the addition of 1 lb. of brown sugar two days into the fermentation, which I followed. There's no way to be absolutely sure what this did to the overall gravity of the beer, but to the best of my calculations, it added approx .009. Fermentation continued, and I left it alone for some time. After a little over a week, it looked as if things had settled down, so I checked the gravity: 1.037. Not bad from such a high start, but still "too high" to be palatable. And there it stopped.
I read Wyeast's website about 3787, which indicated that this strain likes to continue to be fed sugar additions. So I added yet another pound of brown sugar (again, by my estimates, adding .009 to the gravity), and out of prudence, pitched an additional smackpack of 3787 I had lying around. Things got going again (though not as much as before), and I managed to get the beer down to 1.030. There it stayed.
If I'm right that the brown sugar additions added approx. .009 to the gravity of the beer, then the alcohol level is getting up there: 1.108 + .009 + .009 = 1.126. (1.126-1.030)*131 = 12.6% ABV.
I've sampled the beer: it smells and tastes like a tripel; in fact, it tastes quite like New Belgium's Trippel... aside from the fact that it is WAY too sweet. Cloyingly so - it has a wonderful exotic complexity, but definitely too sweet for more than a sip or two. Unfortunately, being brewed as a tripel, the hop bittering presence is relatively low, so the beer is unbalanced.
(as a side note, I should say the wort made was highly fermentable, so much of the residual sugars ought to be able to be fermented... by a yeast with a high enough alcohol tolerance).
So I thought I would add some champagne yeast to try and bring things down a bit more and dry it out a little; beer yeast would probably just pass out in this high alcohol environment. So I pitched a packet of rehydrated Lalvin-1118 in 24 hours ago...
... and nothing. 24 hours later, there has been no appreciable sign of fermentation and the gravity is unchanged.
So. Decision time! I see a few options, but only a couple I'd really want to try:
(1) condition and bottle it where it is. Ugh, I don't think so. I'd never drink it... too sweet by far.
(2) boil some hops in a small amount of water (or weak extract wort) for an hour and blend it with the trippel to try and up the bitterness to balance the beer out. This seems like the best option, BUT I'm afraid I'd take the beer too far in another direction -- I don't want some kind of american barleywine thing; I'd like to keep it reminiscent of a tripel if possible (fruity and floral).
(3) Try champagne yeast again, but pitch substantially more, on the theory that the yeast in one packet simply rehydrated was overwhelmed/shocked by the environment in the beer. Use multiple packets, and/or make a starter of champagne yeast. I know conventional wisdom is that one shouldn't make starters for dry yeast, but since the starter would be pitched into such a high alcohol environment (currently at least 10.2%, perhaps as high as 12.7%), I'd think any bacteria/wild yeasts in the packet would have a hard time taking over.
So FINALLY... I turn to you guys: would you choose one of the above options, and if so, which (and how would you go about it)? Is there another avenue to consider to help reduce the sweetness?
Cheers, and thanks in advance!
- EJ
(I'm choosing to not even THINK about carbonation at this point... this beer may be the one that tips the scales toward kegging for me, but I'll worry about that later...)
Forum: Homebrewing | Author: Engine Joe
Posted: December 27, 2008, 6:24 pm
