Anniversary IPA - how to fix lack of time in Primary

[Fidelity101]

Top: Beer before transfer to secondary
Bottom: Beer before transfer to keg (from secondary)

I made a batch of Annivesary IPA from a kit from Niagara Home Brew and Wine here in Buffalo, NY. The ingredients were 3.3lbs of Pilsner Light liquid malt extract, 1 pound of Gold Dried malt extract and 16oz of honey. SafeAle S-33 yeast was used in the kit. OG was 1.062 (kit said 1.064 was expected). FG was 1.021 with expect FG of 1.015.

The problem (my mistake) was transferring out of primary after 4 days instead of waiting at least a week. Because of this, my FG is high and I thought I’d just drink it and learn going forward. BUT, it tastes bad. Not horrible, not good...just bad. It’s drinkable and there are no off flavors but it’s just bitter, sweet and alcohol is 5.6% where it should be 7% or so. As you can see from the pictures, it sat in secondary for a full week and really cleared out but that wasn’t enough to make up for the quick transfer out of primary.

I’ve already transferred it back to primary, it’s warming up to room temperature which is 68F and I have a packet of Nottingham yeast and 10oz of bottling sugar.

Question: What would you do to dry this beer out, lower FG and save this beer.

 

[Jag75]

For future batches dont transfer to secondary. That looks oxidized badly. Hoppy beers are sensitive to o2 . Transferring your beer back and forth is a killer.

Your kit projected to be 6.4abv your actual abv is 5.38 . Did you use a hydrometer to check?

 

[kh54s10]

Agreed, it you transferred to secondary without oxidizing it, it would have finished fermenting there. Transferring too soon was not the problem.

Don't do secondaries - that is a holdover from commercial procedures.

1.020 is often where extract batches will finish. And most often is not something that is bad.

You might try adding some sugar and letting it ferment out, there is no need for more yeast. But, at this point I would get another beer going and give up on this one.

 

[bucketnative]

I really wish the homebrewing industry would step up and re-issue their standard instructions for homebrewing beer. I know it gives them an excuse for selling an additional fermenter. Perhaps this could be someone's mission at Homebrew Con, or whatever.

As @Jag75 said, secondary for regular beers is really an extraneous step that introduces greater chances of oxidation and infection. It really doesn't add anything to your beer, and it should only be done when doing a true secondary fermentation step on fruit (or some other additive) or aging long term for a specific style.

Primary fermentation is a term for fermenting with yeast that was pitched into your wort (and really, that is the only fermentation step needed in most beers). By transferring to secondary, you move the beer off the yeast cake/trub layer, but there is still plenty of yeast in suspension to finish fermenting in the secondary vessel, so I doubt this is the root of you higher than expected FG. By transferring it back to primary, you didn't help anything in terms of finishing fermentation. See next line, it could be done.

As @kh54s10 said, 1.020 is not uncommon for extract batches. The worst are just not as fermentable as all-grain, in most cases.

Also, it seems that you are judging your beer prior to carbonation, which is not ideal. Carbonation adds so much to the taste of beer, that I wouldn't be surprised if you found the beer much improved after carbonating.

Finally, fermentation doesn't follow a calendar. The yeast will be done on their schedule. All we can do is provide them the necessary food (wort), perhaps control temperature, and allow them to do their jobs. Monitoring fermentation via gravity measurements is the true means of determining when it is finished. Best of luck, but I think you will enjoy this beer better once it is carbed up and chilled down.

 

[Jag75]

I've never had an extract kit finish at 1.020 unless it was projected for that specific kit. The projected numbers have been spot on every time I've done them and I'd say about 20-30 kits . Its usually within a point or 2 at the most. Also I dont know if you were planning on using 10 oz of bottling sugar but dont do that . Northernbrewer.com has a priming calculator. I've never used more the 5 oz .

 

[Fidelity101]

The first picture posted was prior to transfer to secondary. The second picture was prior to transferring to the keg. I should have labeled them, but I posted them to show how it had time to clear in the secondary. Total fermentation time was 11 days.

I agree that a secondary isn’t required but in this case I used 1 oz of hops in the secondary to dry hop the beer. My FG after 7 days in the secondary was still too high but I didn’t want to leave the hops floating any longer out of fear that the flavor would start to change. Again the instructions said not to let the hops float for more than 10 days...I was at 7. A friend of mine told me I should have cold crashed the secondary before transferring out so the hops settle out, which I didn’t do as the instructions didn’t call for it. I wonder if that’s affecting the flavor?

I should have left this beer in the keg and just brought it back to room temperature to let it continue fermenting which would have saved me cleaning everything all over again AND reduce the risk of contamination.

I did cool the beer and carbonate with 12psi thinking that would change the flavor (keg was 38F and well carbonated before I decided it wasn’t good) The interesting part is that I tasted the beer after taking FG as I had 250ml of the beer in my hydrometer tube. That beer actually tasted good. Now that it’s chilled and carbonated it just doesn’t taste very good. I mean it’s perfectly drinkable but it’s bitter with a sweet after taste. Nice aroma but zero hint of fruity notes like I would have expected.

Since I’m going through this effort to make changes, can anyone recommend a type and quantity of hops to add as dry hops to really add some citrus notes?

 

[Jag75]

It depends on your preference of IBUs. I like mine around the 60-65 . I love Amarillo, citra , mosaic , Galaxy , Mandarina Bavaria and many more . Check out hop charts to see what ones youd like to try. Like this one

http://www.hopslist.com/hops/

I normally do a magnum bittering at 60 min then the rest late and whirlpool. Then dry hop with about 4-5 oz 3 to 5 days away from packaging .

 

[Fidelity101]

So this one was Warrior Hops 15.9%AA (1oz) for 60 minutes. Chinook 12.8AA 1oz for 10 minutes. Then Cascade 7.3%AA (1oz Leafy hops) for dry hops. It definitely doesn’t need more bittering. The aroma is fine. What it needs is less sweetness (hopefully lowering FG helps) and lots more citrus notes.

Current IBU is 75. I don’t think Dry Hops count towards IBU

 

[HB_ATL73]

Yes lowering the FG will help but if that sweetness is coming from oxidation it will not go away, only get worse.

I would skip secondary fermentation from now on like others have mentioned

 

[Fidelity101]

I’m also wondering if my water is causing issues as I’m always high on FG. My water PH is 7.8 and the hardness is around 150 (I know this only because I have a hot tub). I think the next batch will be made with a 5 gallon jug of water from the grocery store.

Lots of questions here I know and thanks to everyone for your help. I’ll add oxidizing as another concern going forward and after a little research, I think that might be another large contributor to my beer flavor. This beer tasted good when transferring to keg and now it’s just bland and blah...bitter with sweet aftertaste. I’m trying to fix it but it sounds like I’m just going to end up making things worse.

In the mean time, per the direction of those who sold me the kit, I’m going to add a Yeast nutrient and 1 packet of Champaign yeast to try and lower the FG. If nothing else, I’ll learn something from this.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

I think the next batch will be made with a 5 gallon jug of water from the grocery store.

Have you seen this? https://beerandbrewing.com/brewing-water/ ? Skip down to the Tips For Extract Brewers section. More details in How to Brew, 4e (howtobrew.com is out of date when it talks about water for extract brewiing).

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Perhaps this could be someone's mission at Homebrew Con, or whatever.

Ask the Experts: John Palmer, May 2013: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=15108.msg191642#msg191642.

Brew Strong podcast 03-22-10 (http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/post477/) starting at about 25:40 is the earliest reference I've found (so far) for the 'no need to transferr into a secondary vessel' statement (there's a partial transcript at https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/...jamil-zainasheff-weigh-in.176837/#post2047670 ) My favorite statement was where Jamil says "Stop getting the thing [How To Brew, 1st edition] off the internet."

 

[Jag75]

Yes water has a big influence on our beer imo. When doing extract kits it's best to use RO water because the extract already had its salts and acid adjustments. I had my water tested and started building water profiles . I eventually went 100% RO water and building since it was easier. Except when I make a stout , my tap water is perfect for those.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

I made a batch of Annivesary IPA from a kit from Niagara Home Brew and Wine here in Buffalo, NY. The ingredients were 3.3lbs of Pilsner Light liquid malt extract, 1 pound of Gold Dried malt extract and 16oz of honey. SafeAle S-33 yeast was used in the kit. OG was 1.062 (kit said 1.064 was expected). FG was 1.021 with expect FG of 1.015.

https://nthomebrew.com/products/Anniversary-IPA.html ?

S-33 appears to have an estimated attenuation of 70% vs US-05's 80% (both estimates taken from Brewers Friend). With a five gallon kit, I needed 6.6 lbs of LME, 1 pound of Gold Dried malt extract and 16oz of honey to get OG 65. If I'm reading the chart on p 43 of "Tips and Tricks" correctly, S-33 doesn't ferment Maltotriose well (link to PDF here: https://fermentis.com/en/tips-n-tricks/for-you-brewers/). I don't know if Brewers Friend takes this into account when estimating FG. If it doesn't, that could be a partial explanation for the higher actual FG (vs estimated FG).

Beer color is hard to measure accurately in the fermenter. Yeast and hop trub in suspension will change the color. The container size will also have an impact of perceived color.

LME can darken quickly if not shipped and stored properly. Briess has a couple of Technical Presentations on their web site from 2004 /2005 with more details (http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Malting101/Technical_Presentations.htm).

 

[Fidelity101]

So I added 2tsp of Yeast Enhancer after the beer got back up to 60F...and this happened (see picture). Beer foamed up to about 2-3 times it's volume. After it settled down, I cleaned off the bottle and pushed forward but I have no idea what was taken out of the beer (hopefully just CO2).

Once the Volcano action stopped, I cleaned off the primary and pitched the yeast along with 1oz of Simco and 1oz of Citra in a Muslin bag. The yeast was Lalvin EC 1118 which had been sitting in 90F water for 20 minutes. I gave it a stir and put the cap on it where it will sit for a week. I'm thinking this is just becoming a waste of time/money but fingers crossed that this beer can be saved.

 

[Jag75]

Oh dang!! I've seen mead do that if you dont de gas . I've never added nutrients to beer before , but it's safe to say it will do that same lol.

 

[Fidelity101]

One week in Primary along with 1oz of Citra and 1oz of Simco. I added the champagne yeast as well as the Yeast Enhancer and it did slowly ferment over the course of the week. FG was STILL 1.020 and officially giving up on lowering FG...time to drink it.