What would you do

[Mr B]

Hey all

Contemplating correcting a low gravity for a brew done today.

Brew is a 56 L batch of Dubbel/Tripel, with a target of 1.068 and an actual of 1.062. The recipe is basically a dark strong belgian, a little on the lighter ABV side.

Target ABV is 8.6%, actual reading gives 6.9% assuming high attenuation.

So, two options:

1) Do nothing. This beer is not really chasing style, the ABV is reasonable, just a little annoying
2) Add sucrose when I pitch. Looking for a calculator, but nothing decent found as yet. This would bump the ABV to something approximating a 'reasonable' ABV. Might thin the body a bit. If I add sugar to the Beersmith recipe, a kilo bumps the 6 points.

What would you do?

Recipe for reference:

82 Dubbel Tripel
Belgian Dark Strong Ale (26 D)

Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 50.00 L
Boil Size: 59.17 L
Boil Time: 60 min
End of Boil Vol: 54.17 L
Final Bottling Vol: 50.00 L
Fermentation: Dubbel profile
Date: 04 May 2019
Brewer: Mr B
Asst Brewer:
Equipment: 70L Mash tun
Efficiency: 75.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 78.0 %
Taste Rating: 30.0
Taste Notes:
Ingredients
Amt Name Type # %/IBU Volume
72.09 L Mr B's Tank Water Water 1 - -
9.00 g Chalk (Mash) Water Agent 2 - -
8.00 ml Lactic Acid (Mash) Water Agent 3 - -
2.00 g Epsom Salt (MgSO4) (Mash) Water Agent 4 - -
1.00 g Baking Soda (Mash) Water Agent 5 - -
1.00 g Calcium Chloride (Mash) Water Agent 6 - -
1.00 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash) Water Agent 7 - -
12.00 kg Pilsner, Malt Craft Export (Joe White) (1.6 SRM) Grain 8 84.5 % 7.82 L
0.50 kg Caramunich I (Weyermann) (51.0 SRM) Grain 9 3.5 % 0.33 L
0.30 kg Special B Malt (180.0 SRM) Grain 10 2.1 % 0.20 L
0.10 kg Chocolate (Briess) (350.0 SRM) Grain 11 0.7 % 0.07 L
5.80 g Chalk (Sparge) Water Agent 12 - -
1.30 g Epsom Salt (MgSO4) (Sparge) Water Agent 13 - -
0.60 g Baking Soda (Sparge) Water Agent 14 - -
0.60 g Calcium Chloride (Sparge) Water Agent 15 - -
0.60 g Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Sparge) Water Agent 16 - -
20.00 g Magnum [12.00 %] - First Wort 60.0 min Hop 17 12.1 IBUs -
1.00 kg Candi Sugar, Dark [Boil] (275.0 SRM) Sugar 18 7.0 % 0.71 L
0.30 kg Sugar, Table (Sucrose) [Boil] (1.0 SRM) Sugar 19 2.1 % 0.19 L
50.00 g Saaz [5.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 20 9.7 IBUs -
1.0 pkg Belgian Tripel (Mangrove Jack's #M31) Yeast 21 - -
Gravity, Alcohol Content and Color
Est Original Gravity: 1.068 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.004 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 8.6 %
Bitterness: 21.9 IBUs
Est Color: 26.3 SRM
Measured Original Gravity: 1.062 SG
Measured Final Gravity: 1.010 SG
Actual Alcohol by Vol: 6.9 %
Calories: 582.6 kcal/l
Mash Steps
Name Description Step Temperature Step Time
Mash Step Heat to 55.0 C over 0 min 55.0 C 10 min
Mash Step Add 43.82 L of water and heat to 55.0 C over 0 min 55.0 C 0 min
Mash Step Add 0.00 L of water at 65.0 C 65.0 C 40 min
Mash Step Add 0.00 L of water at 72.0 C 72.0 C 30 min
Mash Step Add 0.00 L of water at 76.0 C 76.0 C 10 min

Sparge: Fly sparge with 30.26 L water at 76.0 C

 

[MHB]

One question I have is why all the carbonate additions?
I count 4 of them, frankly I cant see why you would want to add a pH raising agent, then add acid to counteract the high pH.
There is also no acid addition to the sparge water where it really is probably most useful.
Apart from that why such a complex water chemistry assault?
Just finger counting I get a fair bit higher required efficiency than the 75% quoted (over 80%) I suspect the software is giving the JW pilsner a bit more credit than it deserves.

I would add enough sugar to get to the target OG, that's what the beer is designed to balance at, personally I would add it about half way through the ferment. Adding later reduces yeast stress.
One other point, adding sugar doesn't make the body lighter! it just makes alcohol, you have the same amount of body building ingredients before and after the sugar addition and the same FG.
If you compared to beers with the same OG, one containing sugar the other AG, the sugared one would have a lower body, not from the sugar but from the use of less malt.
Mark

 

[Mr B]

Thanks Mark, great comments

Water was a bit rushed last night - Additions to get Chimay target mineral profile.

Appreciate that there is raising and lowering going on, but this seemed required to get the profile.

I don’t tend to add acid to sparge, might need to look into this more.

Re body, wouldn’t using sugar as a greater contributor to abv make the body a little less than if the efficiency had been higher? So if the sugars for the abv came from malt (particularly the crystals) there would be a little more complex sugars/unfermentables in comparison?

Thanks for the vote to bump abv using sugar.

 

[MHB]

Sugar wont lower the body, just increase the alcohol.
All the body building parts of a beer are in the residual after fermentation (what makes the FG), raising the OG (up until the yeast cant eat all the sugar) wont change the FG one iota.

I'm far from convinced that taking a great deal of notice of reported water profiles pays. Most of them are reports on what comes out of a tap somewhere in the area around the brewery. Often the brewery is using a completely different water supply, or are heavily modifying their water and in the case of some of the Belgian breweries have been doing so for hundreds of years.

Generally I think adding carbonate to anything other than a very big stout is counterproductive (even I big stouts I still have my doubts).
Mark

 

[keine_ahnung]

Sugar wont lower the body, just increase the alcohol.
All the body building parts of a beer are in the residual after fermentation (what makes the FG), raising the OG (up until the yeast cant eat all the sugar) wont change the FG one iota.

I'm far from convinced that taking a great deal of notice of reported water profiles pays. Most of them are reports on what comes out of a tap somewhere in the area around the brewery. Often the brewery is using a completely different water supply, or are heavily modifying their water and in the case of some of the Belgian breweries have been doing so for hundreds of years.

Generally I think adding carbonate to anything other than a very big stout is counterproductive (even I big stouts I still have my doubts).
Mark

Thank you Mark!
THANK YOU for mentioning this!

I know that in Germany, it's not uncommon for larger breweries to have their own well, where they tap directly into the underground resevoir. I can imagine this being similar in Belgium
...and then, at least in Germany, most of them have their own water treatment. For example, the water in Munich is not at all ideal for brewing bright lagers, which is why they all "soften" the water these days.
Back in the day, before water treatment technology existed, they brewed darker beers, as darker malts are better at puffering the hardness/carbonates in the water. (as anyone who's started playing with water chemistry hast *hopefully* read and understood)

So when the homebrewer digs out a water profile of Munich tap water, and tries to replicate it to brew a Munich Helles with...he's actually going to a whole lot of trouble to achieve a water, that most breweries in Munich want to avoid/improve.

I'd recommend paying more attention to malt quality (FAN content!!), getting the mash well fine tuned, having healthy yeast, and making sure the mash pH and pH at the end of the boil are on target.

Back to your question regarding adding sucrose.
This is definitely a way to get your abv up a bit, even if far from ideal.

.... personally I would add it about half way through the ferment. Adding later reduces yeast stress.
Mark

Mark, can you elaborate on this?
Funnily enough I'm currently studying for an exam on Fermentation next week.
I'm assuming the the logic behind this is to not further inhibit the synthesis of Maltopermease and Maltase through increased glucose-concentration before the yeast has had time to adjust.
I've read a bunch on this topic the last few days. However haven't found anything regarding a later addition of simple sugars...
Just that a higher concentration of them significantly hinders the yeast's ability/speed to build up the required enzymes to transport maltose and maltotriose into the cell and split them up into glucose to go into the glycolyse. To the point where concentrations of sucrose that are too high, can significantly raise the FG and the time it takes to get there.

Have you got some info on what the yeast does when it's already adapted to processing maltose/maltotriose?
Given the general rule that the yeast doesn't start to process them until it's used up pretty much all Glucose/Fructose, I would have assumed that adding simple sugar at this point would cause the yeast to kind of skip back into a bit of a second "lag phase"..

 

[MHB]

If you have a look at the Belgian Excise rules, they calculate the tax on what's in the kettle at the end of the boil, including the amount most of us would leave in there with the trub. Belgian rules also preclude adding any sugar later than the end of the boil, this quirk in their law is the reason for some of the rather strange or perhaps extreme steps some Belgian brewers go to, to get everything they can out of the kettle, including filtering, centrifuging and once upon at time pressing the trub.

I think that most of the early work on using sugar was influenced by the Belgian methods (them being the biggest and perhaps earliest users of large amounts of sugars) whether those methods were good brewing practice or not.

Getting there -
One enzyme that you didn't mention is Invertase, If yeast encounters a large amount of Sucrose it will as a First Order action excrete Invertase to break sucrose into Glucose/Fructose. By first order I mean before it does anything else.
There was an old method of manufacturing Invertase, it involved dumping old brewery yeast slurry into a hot (~60oC) saturated sugar solution, the yeast would in its death throws excrete lots of invertase, cool the sugar solution, crop the invertase and dead yeast, repeat...

A few years ago I was having trouble getting Belgian Triples tasting just the way I wanted, did some research on yeast sugar metabolism and came up with an approach that works for me.
Don't add Sucrose (or monosaccharides either) to the kettle,
Pitch a big healthy starter of appropriate yeast, suitable for a say 1.070 (17.5oP0 instead of adding to a say 1.100 (20oP) if the sucrose was included. Reduces yeast stress.
Add the sucrose when the yeast has reduced the gravity by at least the amount you are adding. At say 1.040 (10oP) bringing the gravity back up to where you started (say 1.070) but not higher. Even better to add several smaller sugar batches.

Found the beer had a much crisper and cleaner taste, achieved lower FG's and made a measurably bigger reduction in the amount of maltotriose in the finished beer (had access to a HPLC with a size sorting column at the time).

I cant point up any specific research, just bits and pieces from all over the place, sort of synthesised into a practical approach to making high alcohol high gravity beer that tastes better.
I do know a couple of commercial brewers local who use the same approach.
I strongly suspect that having a lot of sugar early in the ferment acts just like having lots of monosaccharides (well the invertase creates the same situation) and you start to experience the inhibiting effects on the yeasts ability to manage Maltose and Maltotrios.
Mark

Been a couple of years since I put in the time on this one, I recall these being useful, but have a bunch more. Shoot me a PM with an email address if you want any copies - too big/much to post here
If you have a copy of Yeast in the Brewery (VLB) some of my thinking came from there
Yeast Chemistry Steve Brainerd
Yeast Propagation and Maintenance: Principles and Practices MB Raines-Casselman, Ph.D.

 

[keine_ahnung]

Cheers Mark.

Yeah that would seem to agree with what I was thinking.
Well aware of the invertase. It's pretty constant in it's existence (between the cell-membrane and Mannan-Phosphate-Layer) and function in the Yeast cell wall . i.e. breaking Saccharose down into it's two components Glucose-Fructose.
Glucose and Fructose are the only two sugars that can pass through the cell wall via simple difussion. They then enter Glycolysis.

However the remaining two types of fermentable sugars (Maltose and Maltotriose) have to be actively transported/reduced in(to) the cell via the Maltopermease and Maltase.
A high concentration of the simple sugars (Maltose and Fructose) inhibits the yeast in building Maltopermease and Maltase -> and thus the uptake and metabolism of Maltose and Maltotriose.
Studies have shown that too higher concentrations of simple sugars can inhibit Maltopermease and Maltase creation so significantly that the yeast never completely "adapts" to Maltose, resulting in poor FG's --> i.e. incomplete fermentation of fermentable sugars in the wort.
This is exacerbated by yeast that has been in solutions with little/no Maltose for long periods of time. e.g. yeast stored in water or fully fermented beer.

My original brainfart was thinking that adding sucrose before the fermentation really gets going, would reduce stress on the yeast while it adapts to maltose/maltotriose. However, that was a bit of a brainfart. Once the yeast has adapted to it, it has the required enzymes and they're happy to work away. The invertase are there in the cell wall, either way, and will happily and quickly split Sucrose -> Fructose + Glucose and send them into Glucolyse.

I'd be interested to find out what the side-effects of this are (there are ALWAYS side effects). Sure I'll come across that in my further studying.

 

[MHB]

With you on the side affects, that's an always!
One of my favorite sayings is "everything ends up in the glass" I mean every choice in ingredients, process and more than perhaps anything else your yeast, the type, how healthy it is, how you manage the ferment, even post fermentation handling.
Mark

 

[Mr B]

Forgot about this thread, thanks for very interesting info.

So, to take the technical level down a bit:

Added sucrose to the fermenter to make up the gravity shortfall, turned out nice.

Added about 2 days into ferment, was surprised by how much it had dropped. Think it was about 20 points.