trippel with FG of 1.030?

[mboardman]

Let this one sit in a secondary for a lot longer than recipe kit called for, about two months total, but had heard good things about trippels being left alone for long periods.

OG was 1.088, FG was 1.030, sampled twice, two weeks apart, then bottled it thinking it wouldnt move anymore. Now, two months after bottling, I let a sample sit overnight to de-gas and get up to 68-70F and reading on that is 1.022.

Two questions:

1. Wondering what my abv is? The online calcs indicate 7% or so but it doesnt feel like that when I drink it. Tastes good, decent carbonation, etc. Just feels like a low powered beer.

2. Does this indicate bottle conditioning taking place, the change in gravity readings? Wouldnt that tend upward, not down? Did something go wrong?

 

[LLBeanJ]

Belgian styles can be slow to finish and my guess is that at 1.030 it still had a ways to go and continued to ferment in the bottle. Not uncommon for them to stall and start up again. Tripels should finish around 1.010 or lower, so that's 20 points off. Bottle conditioning will add a small bit of alcohol, but shouldn't add any gravity points due to the priming sugar fermenting out completely. If it truly dropped 8 points while in the bottle, I would have expected it to volcano when the bottle was opened. If it didn't, then maybe the 1.030 reading wasn't accurate. If it did, then it's already well overcarbonated and could still be dropping, which could eventually result in bombs.

 

[RM-MN]

Your FG reading on that triple sounds just like I would expect if you used a refractometer to measure it. The presence of alcohol skews the reading of the refractometer.

 

[mboardman]

Your FG reading on that triple sounds just like I would expect if you used a refractometer to measure it. The presence of alcohol skews the reading of the refractometer.

No, the old fashioned hydrometer was used.