[BrewBama]

... im on a mission to brew the best beer in the world and i will never stop lol

I recommend you might consider lowering your sights to brewing really good beer. If you’re trying to brew the ‘best beer in the world’ (as if we’d agree on one) you’ll never reach your goal and end up a very frustrated brewer. The ‘golden mean’ is the desirable middle ground between two extremes: perfection and crap.

“Don’t Cling to a Mistake Just Because You Spent a lot of Time Making it.” — Aubrey De Graf.

Life’s too short to drink bad beer. Toss it and remember it no more. Try again using your gained knowledge to refine your processes.



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[MattyAHA]

... im on a mission to brew the best beer in the world and i will never stop lol

I recommend you might consider lowering your sights to brewing really good beer. If you’re trying to brew the ‘best beer in the world’ (as if we’d agree on one) you’ll never reach your goal and end up a very frustrated brewer. The ‘golden mean’ is the desirable middle ground between two extremes: perfection and crap.

“Don’t Cling to a Mistake Just Because You Spent a lot of Time Making it.” — Aubrey De Graf.

Life’s too short to drink bad beer. Toss it and remember it no more. Try again using your gained knowledge to refine your processes.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

i appreciate your input but i will one day make the best beer in the world (aka perfect beer to me) best beer in the world is subjective, frustration is just part of the journey not worried

[denny]

I bottled a BGS ale recently. Not specifically a clone of Duvel, but close. Which yeast did you use and what are the tastes and flavors that you are getting? I used WY3878 Westmalle. It came out great and I even let it ferment into the low 80’s.

Maybe we can pinpoint something.

i used wy1388 belgian strong, pitched at 63F and over the coarse of 2 weeks ramped the temp to 78F, its hard to describe the flavors, if i had to guess i'd say highly estery and too sweet, it hit FG a little high then i wanted, i mashed at 148F for 90 mins, to be honest im not really sure what it tastes like but i do not taste pilsner malt, i do not taste hops, it tastes like an undrinkable sweet strange concoction with alcohol in it, alcohol is not hot at all

Looks to me like your fermentation temp might have been too high

yeah i was concerned about the high temps, but i was just following the recipe, the yeast temp range is 64F-82F so i figured i would bring it to the upper range without exceeding the recommended temp range for the yeast in attempt to keep the yeast active to dry it out without creating too many by products, needless to say it did not dry the beer out lol, my next go at this im not exceeding 72F

My experience has been to take those temp ranges with a grain of salt.  I often prefer to go lower than the low end listing and never get near the high end.  When Wyeast took on 1450, I told them the temp range where I felt it worked best.  For some unknown reason, they raised both ends.

Denny, just out of curiousity, if you were brewing a belgian golden strong(duvel clone) what would you ferment at? what would your fermentation process be?

Considering I just finished a keg of exactly that, I can tell you what I did....recipe was pils malt and 17% table sugar to an OG of 1.071.  Mash at 148 for 90 min.  30 IBU Hallertauer Mit.  1388 in an overnight, 1 qt. SNS starter.  Ferment at 63 for a couple weeks, raise to 72 for a few days, crash to 33 for a week maybe.  FG 1.002, 97%AA, 9.12 % ABV

Wow, thats attenuation, amazing, im gonna give your process a go on my next attempt,  you added the sugar to the boil right? some people talk about adding it to the fermentor, just a 1 qt starter sns? impressive

Yep, I always add to the boil.  I have confidence in my yeast.

[Steve Ruch]

I bottled a BGS ale recently. Not specifically a clone of Duvel, but close. Which yeast did you use and what are the tastes and flavors that you are getting? I used WY3878 Westmalle. It came out great and I even let it ferment into the low 80’s.

Maybe we can pinpoint something.

i used wy1388 belgian strong, pitched at 63F and over the coarse of 2 weeks ramped the temp to 78F, its hard to describe the flavors, if i had to guess i'd say highly estery and too sweet, it hit FG a little high then i wanted, i mashed at 148F for 90 mins, to be honest im not really sure what it tastes like but i do not taste pilsner malt, i do not taste hops, it tastes like an undrinkable sweet strange concoction with alcohol in it, alcohol is not hot at all

Looks to me like your fermentation temp might have been too high

yeah i was concerned about the high temps, but i was just following the recipe, the yeast temp range is 64F-82F so i figured i would bring it to the upper range without exceeding the recommended temp range for the yeast in attempt to keep the yeast active to dry it out without creating too many by products, needless to say it did not dry the beer out lol, my next go at this im not exceeding 72F

My experience has been to take those temp ranges with a grain of salt.  I often prefer to go lower than the low end listing and never get near the high end.  When Wyeast took on 1450, I told them the temp range where I felt it worked best.  For some unknown reason, they raised both ends.

What temp range did you tell them?

[HopDen]

If you drank a bottle or two and didn't get sick then maybe you can give them away to some homeless people. Im being serious too

[MattyAHA]

If you drank a bottle or two and didn't get sick then maybe you can give them away to some homeless people. Im being serious too

no way, homeless people deserve good beer too 

[denny]

I bottled a BGS ale recently. Not specifically a clone of Duvel, but close. Which yeast did you use and what are the tastes and flavors that you are getting? I used WY3878 Westmalle. It came out great and I even let it ferment into the low 80’s.

Maybe we can pinpoint something.

i used wy1388 belgian strong, pitched at 63F and over the coarse of 2 weeks ramped the temp to 78F, its hard to describe the flavors, if i had to guess i'd say highly estery and too sweet, it hit FG a little high then i wanted, i mashed at 148F for 90 mins, to be honest im not really sure what it tastes like but i do not taste pilsner malt, i do not taste hops, it tastes like an undrinkable sweet strange concoction with alcohol in it, alcohol is not hot at all

Looks to me like your fermentation temp might have been too high

yeah i was concerned about the high temps, but i was just following the recipe, the yeast temp range is 64F-82F so i figured i would bring it to the upper range without exceeding the recommended temp range for the yeast in attempt to keep the yeast active to dry it out without creating too many by products, needless to say it did not dry the beer out lol, my next go at this im not exceeding 72F

My experience has been to take those temp ranges with a grain of salt.  I often prefer to go lower than the low end listing and never get near the high end.  When Wyeast took on 1450, I told them the temp range where I felt it worked best.  For some unknown reason, they raised both ends.

What temp range did you tell them?

58-70.  I go lower than that sometimes, but never above 70 til the fermentation is at least 5-7 days in.  And truthfully, even then I keep it no higher than 70.

[Robert]

I bottled a BGS ale recently. Not specifically a clone of Duvel, but close. Which yeast did you use and what are the tastes and flavors that you are getting? I used WY3878 Westmalle. It came out great and I even let it ferment into the low 80’s.

Maybe we can pinpoint something.

i used wy1388 belgian strong, pitched at 63F and over the coarse of 2 weeks ramped the temp to 78F, its hard to describe the flavors, if i had to guess i'd say highly estery and too sweet, it hit FG a little high then i wanted, i mashed at 148F for 90 mins, to be honest im not really sure what it tastes like but i do not taste pilsner malt, i do not taste hops, it tastes like an undrinkable sweet strange concoction with alcohol in it, alcohol is not hot at all

Looks to me like your fermentation temp might have been too high

yeah i was concerned about the high temps, but i was just following the recipe, the yeast temp range is 64F-82F so i figured i would bring it to the upper range without exceeding the recommended temp range for the yeast in attempt to keep the yeast active to dry it out without creating too many by products, needless to say it did not dry the beer out lol, my next go at this im not exceeding 72F

My experience has been to take those temp ranges with a grain of salt.  I often prefer to go lower than the low end listing and never get near the high end.  When Wyeast took on 1450, I told them the temp range where I felt it worked best.  For some unknown reason, they raised both ends.

What temp range did you tell them?

58-70.  I go lower than that sometimes, but never above 70 til the fermentation is at least 5-7 days in.  And truthfully, even then I keep it no higher than 70.

That was originally an English yeast (we think) right?   So 58°F would be a typical English brewery's pitching temperature and 70°F the absolute top end during fermentation.   But that would hold for any English yeast, and the manufacturers seem to set the temperature higher for all of their ale yeasts.  Any idea why?  Are they just thinking, "we know homebrewers are going to run these warmer, let's not scare them off?"

[denny]

I bottled a BGS ale recently. Not specifically a clone of Duvel, but close. Which yeast did you use and what are the tastes and flavors that you are getting? I used WY3878 Westmalle. It came out great and I even let it ferment into the low 80’s.

Maybe we can pinpoint something.

i used wy1388 belgian strong, pitched at 63F and over the coarse of 2 weeks ramped the temp to 78F, its hard to describe the flavors, if i had to guess i'd say highly estery and too sweet, it hit FG a little high then i wanted, i mashed at 148F for 90 mins, to be honest im not really sure what it tastes like but i do not taste pilsner malt, i do not taste hops, it tastes like an undrinkable sweet strange concoction with alcohol in it, alcohol is not hot at all

Looks to me like your fermentation temp might have been too high

yeah i was concerned about the high temps, but i was just following the recipe, the yeast temp range is 64F-82F so i figured i would bring it to the upper range without exceeding the recommended temp range for the yeast in attempt to keep the yeast active to dry it out without creating too many by products, needless to say it did not dry the beer out lol, my next go at this im not exceeding 72F

My experience has been to take those temp ranges with a grain of salt.  I often prefer to go lower than the low end listing and never get near the high end.  When Wyeast took on 1450, I told them the temp range where I felt it worked best.  For some unknown reason, they raised both ends.

What temp range did you tell them?

58-70.  I go lower than that sometimes, but never above 70 til the fermentation is at least 5-7 days in.  And truthfully, even then I keep it no higher than 70.

That was originally an English yeast (we think) right?   So 58°F would be a typical English brewery's pitching temperature and 70°F the absolute top end during fermentation.   But that would hold for any English yeast, and the manufacturers seem to set the temperature higher for all of their ale yeasts.  Any idea why?  Are they just thinking, "we know homebrewers are going to run these warmer, let's not scare them off?"

I think they set temps higher based on both commercial norms and knowing that higher temps will give homebrewers a more active fermentation, if not necessarily better beer.  And while there's supposition it's English in origin, I don't know of any definitive evidence.

[EHall]

I always found that higher ABV beers that were bottled took months until they tasted good. especially belgians. I would wait a few months and try it and just keep that up until you can determine if its a tosser or not.

[mdyer909]

If it’s not too nasty, cook with it.  Braised cabbage, marinated venison or pork, carbonnade of beef.....

[Visor]

^^^^^or dry beans or soup, or??? I've never had a beer that was so nasty it wouldn't make a good batch of beans, or soup. I made chicken noodle soup the other day with some long in the tooth Schwartzbier, man was it tasty.

[Robert]

I have made beers, even seemingly innocuous ones like Pilsners, that were too hoppy to be pleasant cooking liquids, especially if any reduction was involved.  Have to consider carefully the use and the quantity.  But generally  beer is a great cooking liquid.  If worse comes to worst, you could consider making vinegar.

[Jason]

If it helps you feel better, I did a brown sugar brown ale but used too much Black Strap (note to self: do not use black strap). The iron content in the blackstrap left a mineral taste that is just not going away. I took half the batch and added a brown sugar addition of 5ml/12oz bottle. taste is so much better but now these are overcarbed. Sometime you lose. I keep them on to hope the minerals drop out. So far no good but I keep hoping...