Low gravity, low alcohol. What now?

[gcarpent]

Ok... I brewed my second all-grain batch (a Belgian blonde ale) almost two weeks ago, and I've been running into some problems.

OG was supposed to be 1051, but mine was 1041. FG was supposed to be 1013, and mine is 1016. So, I'm looking at an ABV of around 3.3% instead of 5.0%. I used a yeast starter and the fermentation temperature was around 67F.

I've questioned how well the grains were milled at the brew shop I bought them from. I've thought a lot about how I could've extended the boil a bit longer to increase the OG (I had taken my reading after I chilled it and didn't want to heat it up again). I don't know a whole lot about how yeast works, so I'm not sure what to say about that. I'm basically wondering where I went wrong and what I can learn from this.

I'm also wondering if there's any way to increase the ABV at this point. I've tasted the beer and it doesn't have a whole lot of flavour. It's not sweet.

Should I add a DME solution? Should I just bottle it and see how it matures?

Suggestions & comments would be appreciated!

 

[ba-brewer]

I would bottle it and put it down as a learning experience. Better to get more beers done to nail down your process then mess around and try to salvage it. How did the first beer come out, what was different this time around?

To figure out if it the grain crush you need to have gravity numbers preboil. If you come up low preboil you can add more time to get the gravity back in line. Adding time at the end will mess up the bitterness. gravitybefore/volumebefore = gravityafter/volumeafter, if you know your boil off rate you can adjust the time of the boil.

If you wanted to add DME or sugar it would of been best to do that before adding yeast.

Maybe provide some more information about your process and the ingredients and people can help you figure what went wrong.

 

[RM-MN]

Everclear or vodka will add alcohol without much flavor change. If you always want a 5% beer you need to keep some of this on hand to fortify...or control the quality of the milling by getting your own mill. The first 3 items that influence the efficiency of the mash are the crush, the crush, and the crush. All other factors are so far down the list as to be negligible. The job of the brew shop is to make money. Changing the mill for each customer doesn't fit well into this goal so it is set to get a reasonable conversion efficiency without leaving customers dealing with a stuck sparge from too fine of milling. If you want consistently good efficiency, you own the mill.

 

[bucksox]

What was the mash temp and how long did it rest for? That would be the first thing I would think of.

 

[Aristotelian]

Bad grains might account for your poor efficiency, but any problems with the fermentation are all on you.

Adding DME is worth a shot. You could also try a adding a high attenuating yeast depending on what you tried for the initial fermentation.

 

[Hammy71]

What to do? Drink it....

 

[tjmac5071]

Personally for my tastes a 3.3% beer with a FG of 1.016 sounds terrible. I would raise the temp over 70 for a few days, of no change then add some sugar and DME. I like drier beers unless it is a RIS or similar, but you may have different tastes and the beer could be just fine for you.

 

[brewcat]

What is the all-grain process? Fly or batch sparge? BIAB?