So I brewed a high gravity scotch ale close to 5 years ago which partially fermented (stuck) but was still very sweet and did not end up carbing at all in the bottle.
I forgot about it.
Discovered and tried it again recently and it was as above. Really too sweet to be even drinkable. Thought I might as well dump the two cases…then thought ‘what the hell’ and poured each bottle onto 1/3 of a yeast cake that had been used to ferment a %5 beer. I also added a packet of safale 05 for kicks.
AND - I have active fermentation! Wahoo.
SO, the reason for my post is to see if anyone has done this before, and to ask what they did next.
I don’t think I should have to let it ‘age’ in secondary again … or should I and treat this 2nd fermentation as starting over and follow all procedures through.
What about bottling? Same as usual? Just bottle right out of the “primary” perhaps?
:cheers:
I have never done this (or heard of it being done, particularly on an 5YO partially-fermented beer), but had a couple follow up questions/thoughts:
-if the beer did not finish fermenting, the bottles could have (should have) exploded or at least gushed if you had an intact seal and proper amounts of priming sugar. Not sure why they wouldn’t have carbonated at all (kept @ cellar temps maybe?)
-great to hear you have an active fermentation…did you aerate and/or take any sort of gravity reading? that would be helpful on this next go round.
-re: additional aging, one of the things that is happening when aging/cellaring a beer is that the existing alcohol oxidizes and goes from having a warming flavor to all sorts of dark/dried fruits, etc. If you’ve ever had a good aged Old Ale, barleywine, tripel or even biere de garde, that is the flavor you are looking for. Here, you (by ‘you’, I mean 'the yeast) are making new alcohol. Depending on gravity/ABV, it could likely benefit from additional aging.
If there was some alcohol in the 5 YO beer, it likely preserved it, but it seems almost like it would be like using old, diluted malt extract in a beer.
If it were me, I’d throw some brett bruxellensis or maybe even some rosaleare on it and age it another few years
Thanks for the reply.
From my cough crappy notes, it appears I let this sit months and months before bottling. I’m sure the reason for this is that the fermentation stuck, then what yeast there were did not survive the long wait in secondary and so had nothing left to give when the priming sugar was added at bottling.
It’s been stored at ~60 degrees in a dark closet.
The only aeration I did (now) was to pour each bottle gently onto the yeast cake. I was worried to do too much. I don’t have a reason for this but I thought some aeration would be good but too much might make for a ‘stale’ flavor since the beer is already paritally fermented. Why? Again, I’m making it up here…
The odor was not unpleasant and yes it does remind me of fruity/prune taste of aged beers. Brown sugar too. There was some OH in it for certain. I was actually surprised by how “not terrible” it did taste as I’ve tried old, stale brew before.
Assuming the fermentation I’m seeing is not (undesirable) bacterial somehow I think it has potential.
I think too some additional aging once fermentation finishes. I might not totally reset the clock though.
I’ll post back on this, but in the mean time anyone please feel free to chime in with any thoughts/ridicule.
[quote=“Arc Jones”]Thanks for the reply.
From my cough crappy notes, it appears I let this sit months and months before bottling. I’m sure the reason for this is that the fermentation stuck, then what yeast there were did not survive the long wait in secondary and so had nothing left to give when the priming sugar was added at bottling.
[/quote]
Thats the weirdest part of this whole thing to me. I’ve had beers in a primary for months and months and there has still been enough yeast in suspension to bottle-carbonate. It sounds like you racked this beer off the yeast though before it was done so I suppose the majority could have dropped out, went dormant or died.
They are typically resilient (and soluble) little suckers though.
