Ok, so long story short, I’m an extract brewer that inadvertently wound up with an all grain kit(oatmeal stout) on my hands. (My brewing buddy accidentally ordered the wrong kit) So in a moment of inspiration/desperation, I claimed we could do this with no problem. I bought a large grain bag and came up with a jacka**ed form of what I later discovered was a BIAB method. The issues I see with our brew day process(other than starting at 8 at night) was letting our mash temp get away from us(hit over 170 and took a bit to get it to 150 again) and sparging multiple times with the malt extract instead of just once with 170* sparge water. The rest of the process went as normal. Normal boil time and hops additions, cooled to 70 then pitched(liquid yeast). Being 3am at this point, we were a bit tired(and maybe a bit tipsy, thank you single malt) and I forget to oxygenate the wort. (Oh, and I got a bit distracted and forgot to actually put the Starsan in the sanitizer bucket) The OG was right on. 1.040 corrected for temp. The brew fermented after about 36 hours (lack of oxygen and haven’t gotten into making yeast starters yet). It fermented for about 2 days then stopped. I realized my mistake with not oxygenating the wort, and vigorously oxygenated when I transferred to secondary. (Way to oxidize the beer bub!)After a few more days with no airlock activity(I know, I know), I may have gotten a little worried and pitched a packet of dry yeast in. (S-04, bc that’s what I had on hand) SG was 1.020 at this point, so something was happening. But after ten days in secondary, SG is still at 1.020, about 2.5% ABV. And the beer is sweet and thin. Not much body at all. It seems to me that hitting the high temp left me with a bunch of unfermentables, with not much starch conversion. (So much for long story short…) Anyways, I was wondering if there was any way to save this beer, or make it better/fuller somehow. I was thinking of making a small mash with toasted oats for a bit more body, and maybe putting a fermentable sugar in. Am I over thinking this? Thoughts, suggestions?
As an aside, this has been a huge learning experience for me. I’ve researched brewing forums till 2am for the past week, and tore through Papazians Joy of Home Brewing yesterday. I know I made a lot of rookie mistakes, because, well, I’m a rookie. And I’m ok with that. Live and learn!
Here’s the recipe, from Midwest’s page:
9 lbs. Domestic 2-Row barley
8 oz. Rolled Oats
12 oz Chocolate Malt
12 oz. Roasted Barley
1 oz. of hops
WLP004 yeast
We also used our new plastic Big Mouth for primary. After reading up on this fermenter, I don’t think I’ll be using it again. Unless I modify it. I apologize for being so long winded. This has been on my mind for a few days now. I’d hate to see all that time and money literally go down the drain.
Also, I have no real way to control fermentation temps, so I mainly keep my fermenters by my heater grate. It hangs out anywhere from 68-72*. I realize it’s a little warm for this yeast. Hopefully in the next week or two I’ll be making a fermentation chamber…
Hmm… Yeah, it looks like the mash temp in the 170s killed some of the enzymes. But not all. Not bad for a first shot at all grain. And you might still be able to “fix” this beer if you want better attenuation and more alcohol. Here’s how I’d try:
It will help if you make a nice big yeast starter of US-05 first of all. This yeast attenuates very high compared to other yeasts, around 85%, instead of WLP004 or S-04 that quit fermenting in the 60% range. So there’s part of your problem. Only 50% attenuation? Even with a perfect mash, you might not have done a whole lot better with those British yeasts. But you can do better with other yeast like US-05. You could also try a Belgian yeast if you wanted. Now… You can’t just throw in a pack or two of US-05 and expect results, because even at the low 2% alcohol level in your beer, the yeast will die from the alcohol and not do a very good job for you. So, make like a 2-quart yeast starter with a half pound of malt extract, boil, cool, pitch one pack of US-05, and when the starter has a huge krausen on it and is fermenting like mad, then pitch the entire 2 quarts into your batch. After 18-24 hours, you should see signs of fermentation again. This should ferment your beer down a little lower, maybe to 1.012 or something like that, which will help a lot.
After that, if your beer is still higher final gravity than you want, then you can also feed your yeast some dessert using a pound of cane sugar, raw and unboiled. Dump it in there, swirl the fermenter, and hope for the best. This is a last resort but it should work. This will jack up your alcohol and bring down a gravity a hair more.
At no time anywhere in here should you rack the beer to secondary. I repeat – you should NOT rack the beer. Your beer needs all the yeast it can get to put the gravity down to where you want it. Leave all the yeast sediment in there until you’re done playing with the beer. I guess the only exception would be if your fermenter is overflowing due to the additional yeast starter and sugar, then you’d have to rack it. But if your fermenter is big enough, then don’t.
Thanks for the prompt reply Dave! These all sound like great ideas, and sort of the line I was thinking of taking. It seems like I’m going to have to rack into my 6.5 in order to have room to make this work. And it might be good to get it off the old yeast cake anyways. What are your thoughts on making a mash of sorts from quick oats to give the beer a bit more tooth? It’s pretty damn watery…
After all that extra work you may still have crappy beer. You could make another beer and blend some of it with what you have and that may or may not still be crappy. You could just bottle it and save it for a summer thirst quencher. Serve it real cold like a bud.
Watery, eh? Perhaps due to the low original gravity. If you want more meat, maybe brew yourself a very small 1-gallon batch of a very strong high malt beer like a barleywine or something like that, then dump in that wort instead. You could use this for your starter. Feel free to jack it up with extra extract. I don’t think oats are going to do much for you, my humble opinion. What you need is more malt if you want more chew, and you can get this from a strong all-grain batch or just dissolve a couple pounds of extract, make your starter with it, then dump that in.
Brilliant! Really the main reason I was thinking of oats is to get that creaminess you get in an oatmeal stout. According to the recipe, the OG should start out at 1.042-1.046, and finish at 1.014-1.018. So I don’t think I’m really that far off from what it should be, I think? I’ll try making a heavy malt starter and mash in some oats because I can’t let it go . Thanks for the help! Hopefully I’ll be in a position to return the favor someday!
Ok, so I made a “mash” of 1lb of toasted quick oats, set at 155* for 30 minutes, in 1.5 gallons of water. Then I added 1lb of dark DME and boiled for 15 minutes to make sure that the “wort” was sanitary. The local LHBS only had one bag on the shelf. In the meantime, I rehydrated 2 packets of US-05 in 70* water, with 1.5 Tsp of Fermax yeast nutrient. I cooled the “wort” to 70*, and got an OG of 1.056. Corrected for temp. Pitched the yeast in the “wort”. With the grain take up, I wound up with 1 gallon of “wort”. My concern is that I may have stressed the yeast because there may not be enough fermentable sugar in the “wort” to make it viable. And I had to rack the beer out of it’s original 5 gallon fermenter into a 6.5 gallon fermenter simply for the room . And I had to put the starter in a 5 gallon carboy because that was the only vessel I had available that could handle that volume. I have a mess of half gallon growlers, but nothing between that and 5 gallon. And now we wait… So, what did I screw up?
Well… rolled oats have no enzymes so you did not add any sugars there but only unfermentable starches. One pound of extract and the fresh yeast will raise up the alcohol a bit. So… I don’t know exactly how well this will turn out. Keep your fingers crossed and good luck.
In for the update. I’m interested to see how it turns out. To be honest, I would have dumped it, but I tend to hate on myself for making a few mistakes rather than try to fix it. Good luck!
No updates as of yet. I’m waiting on my brewing buddy to get some free time to begin bottling. If it even goes that far. I’ll have him try it out and see what he thinks. Granted, after everything I tried above, there was no noticeable increase in ABV, so this may wind up being a weak, hot summers day sort of brew. I just can’t bring myself to trashing it yet. Taste will tell… Again, thanks for the help and feedback!
So I finally got a chance to get the beer into bottles. It’s been carbing for about 5 days and I decided to check it today. It’s still not as chewy as I would like, and kind of sweet from all the unfermentables, but it’s not terrible. Definitely a lawnmower beer!
. Thanks for the help! Hopefully I’ll be in a position to return the favor someday!
