Beer Forum

So I've been sitting on the this question for awhile and i finally brought all my notes to work so here we go:

I brewed Jamil's Irish Red on April 19 (extract) and then kegged it on May 1. I took gravity readings (below) and noticed the FG was still high but kegged anyway. I enjoyed it at first, but now it seems to heavy/sweet. So here's the question:

Can i put this carbonated beer back into a carboy, throw some new yeast on it to finish out? I have some dry lager yeast laying around that i could use.

Here are the recipe details:
6.6 lbs of Extra Light LME (muntons)
1.4 lbs pale malt LME (Alexander's)
6 oz Crystal 40
6 oz Crystal 120
6 oz Roast Barley

1.25 Kent Goldings 60 min
1 whirfloc tablet

Target OG - 1054
Actual OG - 1050
Target FG - 1014
Actual FG - 1019 (OR is this close enough and i should just adjust the recipe next time)

I would make a hop tea and add that to the keg. I recently did this for a Kolsch. I don't have a set amount of hops or water to use, but what I did was put 0.5 oz Magnum hops I had leftover into a hop bad and boiled for 30 minutes in about 2 cups of water. This helped balance the sweetness and made it a much more drinkable beer. Actually turned out pretty good.

You beer is currently at 73% attenuation which isn't too awful. Jamil would have developed this recipe as all grain where he had more control over the fermentability of the wort than you would with extract. Alexanders is know for good fermentability though.

My guess for the cause of your problem would be a combination of yeast health (and quantity) and the amount of crystal in the recipe. I tend to have high FG problems when I run more than 8 ounces of crystal malt in a 5 gallon batch. Jamil is really anal about yeast health and pitching rates and I am not. Thus he can get great results with this much crystal and my results are mixed. To compensate, I cut the amount of crystal and/or adjust my mash temps.

Trying to fix it now may or may not work. You will need to decarbonate it before pitching a new yeast. This may take several days. I'm not real familiar with dry lager yeasts and how well they will work here. I would be inclined to go with Nottingham as is is a highly attenuative yeast with an appropriate flavor profile for an english/irish beer.

Another approach would be simply to compensate for the sweetness by adding some hop extract to up the IBU's to around 35-40 from the current 25. This would put it out of style, but would make it more drinkable. The big problem here is trying to find the extract. I have some, but guard it like gold.

Hope this helps a little. Maybe Jamil will jump in here to help out.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company