Brewferm Belgian Brown

[Bort]

Yesterday I brewed the Belgian Brown kit from Brewferm very easily now my experience is growing. In the fermentation bucket I added the kit along with 1kg of dextrose sugar and made it up to the 15 litres that this kit is designed to make. I found the instruction leaflet particularly useful and well produced.

The O.G. was taken at 1.053 although the instructions recommended it should be 1.060 so I am not sure why I am a little under here. Target F.G. is 1.000 after 5-10 days which should give me beer at a whopping 6.96% ABV... nice!

The yeast was pitched at 22degC and I plan to bottle condition all of this beer and leave until the colder months.

I’ll post how it goes in a few weeks but if anyone else has had experience of this kit please let me know.

 

[Bort]

I bottled and primed this beer in 500ml PET bottles in mid-September and have them stored in my cool garage. I popped one open earlier this week after a month and it was still very sweet so think this one will need a lot more time to mature... there is definite potential here, just too early right now.

 

[terrym]

@Bort
Something is a bit odd!
If these kits are 1.5kg LME (certainly the American version is about that) and to be brewed with 1 kg Dextrose to 15litres the BF calculator gives an OG of 1.053 so your measured OG of 1.053 is spot on. For an OG of 1.060, and using the same ingredients, you would have to brew to just over 13 litres.
Next a target FG for a beer of 1.000 is extremely unusual in my experience, more so for a kit beer with a high OG, You would normally expect the FG to be in the range 1.006-1.010ish.
Then I see a claim elsewhere for this beer of 8%. Even fermenting down from 1.060 to 1.006 only gives about 7.0% and the priming sugar adds perhaps 0.3%, so at best it will be 7.3%, but more likely about 6% if brewed to 15 litres .
And finally if your beer is 'very sweet' it suggests either a lot of unfermented sugars present (what was your FG? did you carb up in the warm, is your beer flat or carbed as it should be), or if all the fermentables have been consumed, what is left are sugars that cannot ferment out and that would have given a high FG which is not compatible with a high %ABV given the above numbers.
Others may have a different take on all of that.

 

[Bort]

Wow, thanks for this breakdown of the key figures. I will check the F.G. later on and get back to you but the bottle I did open last week had a great head on it, was sufficiently carbed and fizzy. I am thinking too much priming sugar? Will this sweetness die down over time f that is the cause of the sweetness as I was more than satisfied that fermentation had completed in the fermentation vessel after a good fortnight in there. The garage is cool and dark so I do not think a too-warm secondary fermentation is the problem. Can such a sweet beer be rescued at this stage?

 

[Bort]

 

[Bort]

F.G. was 1.004 after nearly three weeks fermenting out...

 

[Bort]

It’s been six weeks in the bottle now and I opened one tonight. There was a huge amount of fizz and foam from the bottle which resulted in half the contents pouring themself down the sink! What was left was very nice and far less sweet than was reported a few weeks ago and there is definitely the ‘Belgian’ element to this brew, both in terms of deep flavour and strength.

Thinking about it, I think I have over-primed this beer at the bottling stage which would explain the very sweet taste some time ago and the eruption that I got when opening a bottle tonight. Maybe next time I’ll severely reduce the amount of priming sugar as I think this is where I have gone wrong!

 

[Bort]

Down to my last few bottles of Belgian Brown from Brewferm after several weeks in the cool, dark garage. Some bottles are very, very fizzy which leads me to suspect I have over-primed the bottles.

There is definitely a 'Belgian' flavour to these but I just think the over-fizzy beer means this hasn't been a successful brew. That said, I would try this kit again under more consistent conditions with much-reduced priming sugar... maybe carbonation drops would give consistent amounts rather than my guesswork dropping table sugar through a funnel from a teaspoon.