When to add sugar to big belgian ale?

Question

When to add sugar to big belgian ale?

Mołot

2016年12月7日 09:11

I'm brewing a cross between Belgian Dark Strong and Barleywine. Currently it is it's third day. Starting gravity was ~26 Brix (~1.11 Specific Gravity). I want to push it up with candi sugar, muscovado, dry demerara sugar and caramel. I'll need almost 2kg of these for the effect I want (30 Brix).

Now, I want my yeast to ferment most malt sugars before I'll add simpler ones. There are sources suggesting that yeast may lose ability to ferment maltose if there is too much simple sugars available. But I don't want to wait for yeast to go dormant either - I'm pushing it 2 percent points above yeast strain alcohol tolerance, so I need them to be active and plentiful.

So, when should I start adding sugar? What should I look for?

Topic belgian sugar partial-mash homebrew

Category Mac

barking.pete · Accepted Answer · 2016年12月7日 09:11

As this is definitely "an experiment" (great!) I suppose one could go about it with some "scientific procedure". I agree that yeast begins to falter in very concentrated sugar solutions. There is a point (eg about 8Kg glucose in 24 litres of water) at which the strength of the sugar solution inhibits yeast metabolism. An extreme example is honey (or treacle) which is relatively stable as regards fermentation. Based on this observation one can deduce that one wants to keep the concentration of sugar in solution below a "critical level". There might be a debate at what that level may be but 4-5Kg of glucose in 24 litres is a reasonable approximation. This idea (I suppose) is the basis for the above question. The procedure I would follow would be to ferment out the natural sugars (eg maltose) in the wort then add successive batches of sugar (dissolved in in water or even wort)and check the progress of the fermentation with a hydrometer. As the SG dropped so I would be tempted to add more sugar solution until either the allocated sugar was used up or the SG did not reduce further after an addition. That would be the best/easiest way to determine if the yeast could actually cope with the additional sugar. By using such a procedure there would be at worst one dose of excess sugar in the resulting brew. So if one divided the planned 2Kg into say 5x400g batches (or even 10x200g) one could discover what the upper limit was without making a beer that could be ridiculously sweet if all 2Kg of sugar was added at once.

Yeast concentration may well play some factor in this process. One might imagine that if there was a strong body of yeast in the brew then it may be (slightly?) more active in at a higher ABV. While alcohol is produced anaerobically - growing/budding yeast needs oxygen. So aeration of the wort may be an important aspect of this process. That is usually done initially when mixing or transferring the wort. Most brewers seem not to like aerating their beer once fermentation has started. After some days some do stir up the brew to disperse precipitated yeast during a fermentation. So some action like this may be needed.

Denny Conn · Accepted Answer · 2016年12月6日 17:10

1

Denny Conn answered at 2016年12月6日 17:10

There really is no advantage to waiting to add the sugar. Get it in there now.

When to add sugar to big belgian ale?

About