Learned a valuable lesson yesterday

[Snotty]

Do not ever brew with my neighbor. Ever. Quality control goes out the window, and by the time we were done (Took 12 hours to brew 10 gallons) he had passed out, not once, not even just twice. But three freaking times!

We were trying to make Scottish Strong for a contest coming up in January. I am not sure what we made, all I know is that it was a mess.

My OG? 1.170 Yes, I am reading my hydrometer right. No way the WLP028 is going to deal with that. So I think I just made a vey sticky gutter wash. We'll see.

On the plus side, Flying Dog's Imperial Porter and Drydock's Maibock are both excellent.

Anyway, my keggle shows up this week. I may re-do this recipe and just keep it myself that I doing it. :D

[Jeepindog]

10 gallons of 1.170? Wow. How many sacks of grain did you use? I brewed a huge Wee Heavy last year and used 27 1/2 lbs for a 5 gallon batch which came in at 1.118 and 13.5% abv. By a quick calculation you must have needed about 59.5 lbs @ 75% efficiency! Where did you mash all that? If you really ended up with 1.117 (1.170 is an easy mistake to make) then you only needed 41 lbs. If you boiled for four hours while you were passed out, and only ended up with about 7 gal, and used 41 lbs, then you'd be back up to 1.170. Either way, if you get it down to around 1.025 (somehow!) you'll be coming in around a 20% abv beer. I hope you ferment it on the VERY cool side to prevent excessive fusel production! (58-60* is typical for Scottish ales) I'm impressed!!! :beer:

[Snotty]

32# of Grain and 6# Inverted Sugar, cooked to a dark brown. Maybe to brown. Started with close to 15 gallons and boiled down to 9-10 gallons.

And yeah, I had to double check my hydrometer because I didn't believe it either.

It is my basement, which holds steady at 60-65 degrees in the summer. As of right now, still no fermentation activity. We have the batch split into the carboys and if we get beer out of this, we are going to leave one batch as is and the other we are going to soak oak chips in a scotch wiskey and drop into secondary for about 8 weeks.

I really do not have the faith that this is going to turn into anything but grog, and bad at that.

We had to use a true Mash Cooker/Lauter Tun setup since neither of us had a mashtun that could handle the grain bill. So we mashed for an hour at 150, and then kicked up to 168 and then 170. Sparge water was at 180. Sparge lasted almost 60 minutes. And we manually transfered with a pitcher from cooker to the tun's. (Needed two tuns)

[Jeepindog]

You had to be reading it wrong. At 100% efficiency the most you could hope for, with 32/6 is 1.1406, or 1.156 at 9 gallons. I don't wanna burst your bubble, but it's just not right. Check it again. Save me a sample and I'll check it with my refractometer. Also, hydrometers are sometimes way off at the price point we pay for them, once you get above 1.100. Check it again, Snotty. For me. If it's right, take a pic and write an article on the whole process, in case this beer comes out great, which it probably will. Maybe dump some champagne yeast in after you get below 1.045, if it goes that far. Dry it out nicely to a 1.025 or so and call it done.

Expected = (Points of extract) * (lbs of grain) / gallons

{Grain and sugar will both add about 37 points per gallon per lb}

(~37)*(38 total)/10 = 140.6, or 1.141 at 100% efficiency

[Snotty]

You had to be reading it wrong. At 100% efficiency the most you could hope for, with 32/6 is 1.1406, or 1.156 at 9 gallons. I don't wanna burst your bubble, but it's just not right. Check it again. Save me a sample and I'll check it with my refractometer. Also, hydrometers are sometimes way off at the price point we pay for them, once you get above 1.100. Check it again, Snotty. For me. If it's right, take a pic and write an article on the whole process, in case this beer comes out great, which it probably will. Maybe dump some champagne yeast in after you get below 1.045, if it goes that far. Dry it out nicely to a 1.025 or so and call it done.

Expected = (Points of extract) * (lbs of grain) / gallons

{Grain and sugar will both add about 37 points per gallon per lb}

(~37)*(38 total)/10 = 140.6, or 1.141 at 100% efficiency

I know, the only thing I can guess is that maybe my therm and temps were off. But my Hydro stops at 1.16 and then you hit the flair of the bubble. That is where it was at. I checked it several times because there is no way it could be right.

It is already sealed in the carboys, active CO2 passing in the airlock was just starting. My biggest concern is that the sugars aren't fermentable. When I get ready to go to secondary, we can re-run the numbers and see if we can't get a "closer" actual OG. I may take you up on the champange yeast on this one. Because the WLP028 just isn't going to take this where it needs to go. I'll give it week in primary, maybe two if it takes off. Then we can asses and go from there.

[Snotty]

Did a check today, Gravity is down to 1.05 and still fermenting. Albeit, it has slowed down a lot. My guess is, even if my original gravity reading was wrong, that I was still in the 1.1 range.

I stopped by TBH last night and say that they actually had the WLP099 SHGY yesterday. I am contemplating picking up a vial, racking over and letting it finish it out.

[Jeepindog]

Did a check today, Gravity is down to 1.05 and still fermenting. Albeit, it has slowed down a lot. My guess is, even if my original gravity reading was wrong, that I was still in the 1.1 range.

I stopped by TBH last night and say that they actually had the WLP099 SHGY yesterday. I am contemplating picking up a vial, racking over and letting it finish it out.

Can't hurt. That yeast won't ferment anything but regular fermentable sugars, like maltose, glucose, etc. It won't make your beer really dry, as I suspect you'll probably have a good deal of unfermentable sugars in the wort as it is. That's a good thing for that style, so give it a shot and let me know how it works.

[Snotty]

Not sure how this is going to taste. You could smell the alcohol, but couldn't taste it. The fermentation took about two, maybe three days to take off. Cleared all the liquid out of my air locks. I don't think it would have gotten anything in it, because I replaced my air lock with a clean one and fermentation was still going. Carboy was reading 70 degrees.


As I said, you could smell the alcohol, but the taste was still sweet. But the main flavor was of the invet sugar that was very dark. Not quite burnt.

Hmmm...

Lachlan, since you are a wiz at the numbers, and based on my current Gravity reading, assumimg 75% effiency and 72.5% attenuation. What do the numbers say for a starting gravity? It is still ferementing, so I feel comfortable saying it will get down to 1.04.

Should I use the High Grav yeast or not... Hmmm

There is about 4" of trub in the bottom now. And the krausen filled the head space in the carboy.

[Jeepindog]

I'll need to get a refractometer reading and a specific gravity reading from the same sample in order to calculate it out. Actually, I have a program now that will do it for me, so it's easy. We can do it when it's done, now, or whenever. There's no hurry.

Here's a link to a site with exactly what we need... http://brew.stderr.net/refractometer.html