Beer Forum

So I made a Belgian Strong Dark that finished about 12 points higher than my anticipated FG of 1.019. It's been so cold lately, I'm guessing the yeast went to sleep on me before completing their job.

I went ahead and kegged and carbonated the beer hoping it would get better with some bubbles, but I hate it. It tastes sweet and worty.

I do not want to dump this beer, but in it's current condition I don't want to drink it either. What are my options besides using it to marinate chicken?

I actaully had the same thing happen recently with a big barleywine. What I do is blend it with a highly attenuated beer. I have both a American Brown Ale and a American Pale Ale that I blend it with.

It works rather well the Brown Ale mixes to give me a nice English Barleywine style beer and mixing with the Pale Ae renders it more towards a American Barleywine. With yours being a Belgain style ale, you should try to blend with something on the clean and maltier side maybe a Cream Ale, Blonde Ale, Amber ale, Brown ale, or something similar to one of these styles.

Besides blending, your best bet would probably be warm the beer back up to fermenting temps and get some yeast active in a small starter. When the starter is actively fermenting, add it to the stuck beer. I would do this right in the keg it's already in and once or twice a day pull the pressure release valve which will tell you if it's fermenting again if there's pressure to be released. This isn't guaranteed to work and it certainly isn't ideal, but it's worth a shot especially if you already don't like the beer as it is anyway.

What about the carbonation that's already in the beer--is this going to be a problem for the new yeast?

Do you recommend using the Belgian yeast strain I previously used or something like champagne yeast?

Holt wrote:What about the carbonation that's already in the beer--is this going to be a problem for the new yeast?

Do you recommend using the Belgian yeast strain I previously used or something like champagne yeast?

When you warm it back up...the CO2 would come out of solution, so when you have to open it to add the new yeast you will let out all the CO2

If it were me I would pick a neutral ale yeast like Cal Ale. As for the carbonation I think that as long as you vent the keg a few times as it warms up there shouldn't be enough CO2 left in the beer to cause problems.

Warm it back up, remove the pressure-relief from a keg lid and...

I have never tried it but i would try adding wyeast french saison yeast to the keg. That yeast is an over attenuating monster. If it cant do it nothing can.