Fixing a wheat/porter mistake

Northern Brewer General
1

Hi. I’ve been brewing extracts for a number of years. Generally speaking, I know what I’m doing. So that puts me in the territory of being over confident, and thus, I made a mistake. I brewed a partial mash wheat/porter recipe, and everything went perfect until I measured the SG and found I was about 20 points under target (target was 1.062, and I was at 1.043). I figured out that I had only added 3lbs of Bavarian Wheat LME instead of the require 6lbs. The wort still tasted ok, though, and I figured it would just end up being a session type beer.

I just transferred it to secondary, and again, it still tastes ok, but a bit heavy on the dark porter side. I was wondering about adding some cane sugar to the secondary to both increase the gravity a little bit, but also take the edge off the dark bitterness. I actually don’t mind it, but I know there aren’t many others that would like it that way. Thoughts on what I could do at this point? Thanks.

Frank

2

Sugar is only going to dry it out and lend to more bitterness, IMO.

I would bring some water to 180° and put your jug of wheat LME in it. Let it sit for 5 minutes. Add that directly to the fermenter. This will soften that acrid bitterness.

2 Likes
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Sounds good. I’ll give that a try. Thank you!

4

Follow-up to be certain, please. How much water should I mix with the LME, and since I brewed this 2 weeks ago, will I need to add additional yeast for the LME addition? Thanks again!

5

No water added. He saying put the jug into warm water to make the LME easier to add. Some additional yeast would be good I feel.

1 Like
6

As @Rburrelli said no water. The heat will pasteurize the LME and will make it more fluid. You shouldn’t need more yeast as they have replicated numerous times so you have plenty.

1 Like
7

Ok. Thank you. I’ll post back in a few weeks to let you know how it went.