Sweet tasting at Final Gravity

[thechan]

Hi all,

I brewed a Belgian quadruple last year and after leaving it to condition in the primary fermenter for about 7 months I took a FG reading and gave it a taste.

It tasted quite sweet, far too sweet for a finished beer I would have thought.

The FG was 1.006 so it clearly isn't a case of stuck fermentation, ABV~11%... Any ideas?

Yeast was m27 mangrove jacks.

Also, any ideas on how to fix it?

Cheers!

 

[klaus]

I don't know this recipe myself so did a quick search, and here

http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Recipes/beer/display/belgian-quadruple

an FG of 1.025 is expected (ABV 10%) which I think means that there will be a generous amount of sweetness left. But I don't understand why it was in the FV for 7 months, or do you mean 7 days?

 

[MyQul]

Big beers can have a cloying sweetness because of the amount of unfermentable sugars still remaining in the beer. Belgians (and Dad of Jon who puts it in and on everything including his cornflakes in the morning) usually use candi sugar in their big beers to dry the beer out to prevent this

 

[thechan]

Thanks Lads,

I don't have the recipe to hand, but the FG was 1.006.

In FV for 7 months to "condition"...(actually just didn't fancy bottling it).

I used begin candidate to bump up the OG which I though might be the reason for the extra sweetness. But then isn't that highly fermentable, so shouldn't leave too much residual sweetness

 

[serum]

What you've probably got there is a lot of esters and they can come across as sweet. If it's down to 1.006 then non fermentable sugars won't really be your issue. I think it's more likely to be the by products of fermentation you're getting.

What was the fermentation temp like and how much did you pitch for that beer?

From what I've read the mangrove jacks yeast is similar to Belle Saison or French Saison. They might even have re-badged it as French Saison now. If that's correct I don't think it'd taste quite right in a big dark beer like that.

You might want to try getting hold of something like Rochefort 10 and doing a side by side tasting to see if you can pick out anything in particular. A Quadrupel will normally attenuate less than what yours has but you need to control it to avoid having too many odd flavours.

For a big beer like this I'd say it's worth shelling out a few more quid for liquid yeast. The only dried one I'd consider is T-58 which is meant to be what De Struise use in Pannepot which is a fantastic beer. Belgian beers are yeast driven so that should be the area where you splash out the most.