hey guys! I'm one of those guys who started off homebrewing by making mead, then moved on to various fruit/vegetable/koolaid wines that they call country wine. I just stumbled on a recipe I'm interested in because it sounds like a real nice session beer, and I think a session beer would be better than a 12% session wine. It's this one: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f62/cream-three-crops-cream-ale-66503/index162.html if you're interested. Anyway, here's my thing:
Most of the stuff I've brewed has been hooch (wine), with the sugars in there being essentially 100% fermentable. I've made, to date, three batches of beer, all high gravity (the lowest being about 1.080 OG). I've managed to get the two that have finished fermenting down below 1.010 (not quite accurate, since one of the brews was partigyle, so there's another beer in there, which came down to like 1.004, which is what I'm worried about). Anyway, my thing is - when making a normal/low gravity brew, I don't really trust the yeasts to stop at a reasonable spot, and leave some body and maltiness. The weakest ale yeast I've seen is rated at like 9%. So are we relying on unfermentable (by those yeasts) sugars to leave the FG at a pleasant point when fermentation is done? I guess my problem is mainly that I've never tried a 'low' gravity brew where the flavors involved are mild enough to put in on par with Bud or whatever. Anyway, maybe the question to ask here is: what's a good IBU target for a 'light' session beer?
Sorry about the rambling, I'm a bottle of mead and 2 quarts of local microbrew in.
So, we're depending on unfermentable sugars to provide body in the low to standard gravity brews?
Most of the stuff I've brewed has been hooch (wine), with the sugars in there being essentially 100% fermentable. I've made, to date, three batches of beer, all high gravity (the lowest being about 1.080 OG). I've managed to get the two that have finished fermenting down below 1.010 (not quite accurate, since one of the brews was partigyle, so there's another beer in there, which came down to like 1.004, which is what I'm worried about). Anyway, my thing is - when making a normal/low gravity brew, I don't really trust the yeasts to stop at a reasonable spot, and leave some body and maltiness. The weakest ale yeast I've seen is rated at like 9%. So are we relying on unfermentable (by those yeasts) sugars to leave the FG at a pleasant point when fermentation is done? I guess my problem is mainly that I've never tried a 'low' gravity brew where the flavors involved are mild enough to put in on par with Bud or whatever. Anyway, maybe the question to ask here is: what's a good IBU target for a 'light' session beer?
Sorry about the rambling, I'm a bottle of mead and 2 quarts of local microbrew in.
So, we're depending on unfermentable sugars to provide body in the low to standard gravity brews?