BWJ Q and A (Dilute the “Super Saison”?)

January 28, 2014 by 1 Comment

The Question

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For no apparent reason, here’s a picture of a cat.

My name’s Michael. I’m a homebrewer originally from Austin but living far, far away. I hear you a bunch on Basic Brewing Radio and I read your article “Expand Your Output” and I had a quick question for the expert in diluting high gravity beers.

I brew BIAB and I made a “super saison” and I didn’t get too much wort (only 13 L) because I made a smaller beer out of the second runnings.

I pitched a healthy amount of WLP565 (farmed from a previous batch) and fermented fairly warm until it attenuated the crap out of this beer, with apparent ABV of over 11%. (OG 1.091. FG 1.006.)

I’d like to boil my priming sugar in 3 L of water, so I can bring my ABV down to the target 9%.

The beer has ~50 IBUs and will need at least 3 months of conditioning.

Will I ruin this beer by diluting it?

— Michael Maze

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10 Gallons (38 L) of Beer from a Stovetop Boil? (Part 2 of 2)

January 16, 2014 by Leave a Comment
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Brewing beer on your stovetop is convenient — and you can yield over 5 gallons (19 L) of beer in some circumstances.

This is the second part of an article on yielding 10 gallons (38 L) of beer from a stovetop wort boil. The first part dealt with the wort density during the boil and bitterness. 

Color

When you boil a dense wort, the amount of ingredients alone will make it darker than many pale beers — deep golden at a minimum, if it is an all-malt beer. However, darker worts also pick up more color during the boil. There’s no way (that I know of) to calculate how much color will develop. However, if you were trying to brew a pale beer by boiling a very dense wort and diluting it, it would likely turn out too dark. This would also limit the number of BJCP styles that could be brewed with this level of dilution in the fermenter. At a minimum, I assume that the beer would turn out a light amber (although I haven’t tested this). So to be safe, we’ll only consider beers that are amber or darker.

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