Will this beer be too sweet?

Discussion on brewing beer from malt extract, hops, and yeast.
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Mell_man79

Will this beer be too sweet?

Post by Mell_man79 » Wed Aug 03, 2016 10:27 pm

So here's the deal. I'm trying to brew a Delirium Tremens clone and I'm worried if it will come out too sweet with the ingredients I'm using. I've put the ingredients in Brewer's Friend and it's telling me my OG will be 1.086 and my FG will be 1.019 giving me a beer with nearly 9% ABV. I'm concerned though that at a FG of 1.019, the beer will be sweet. Definitely do not want a sweet beer. The ingredients is as follows:

9.9lb light liquid malt extract
2.2lb Belgian candi sugar
25g Styrian Golding's
20g Sterling
20g Strisselspalt
20g Williamette
0.40 Oz Coriander Seed Spice
0.14 Oz Ginger Root Spice
0.14 Oz Grains of Paradise
20g Mangrove Jack's M41 Belgian Ale yeast
Attenuation 82-88%

Now. To brew this, I'm using a hop extract that I received from geterbrewed.com that says it will get the beer an IBU of 30. The rest of the hops in the kit will be added to the fermentor five days before bottling using a hop tea. The spices will be added to boiling water along with the candi sugar which will then be left in the fermentor while the beer ferments. This is my first time not brewing from an actually kit, so any advice will be welcomed. But back to the original question. Will this beer be too sweet if it was an OG of 1.086 and a FG of 1.019? I know this won't be a direct Delirium Tremens clone, but I definitely don't want a overly sweet beer. If this FG is too high leading to an overly sweet beer, what do I need to do to get the gravity down to 1.010ish? I originally wanted to get the beer to about 8.5% ABV, but measuring liquid malt extract doesn't sound very fun. I'm willing to sacrifice some of the malt and sugar if need be though. Want something I can actually drink more than one of close to 8.5% ABV.

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Jim
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Re: Will this beer be too sweet?

Post by Jim » Thu Aug 04, 2016 8:32 am

First a disclaimer - I've not done a lot of extract brewing myself. However, those I have done have certainly not come out too sweet, and I doubt if a brew where the sugars are derived from LME and Candi sugar will have that much residual sweetness - maybe a regular extract brewer could comment on that. The attenuation of the yeast will also affect residual sweetness, and the one you've picked is high attenuation (therefore less residual sweetness in the finished beer).

The other thing I would say is that it's not just about the residual sweetness itself, but also how the hop bitterness balances it out (or not). 30 IBUs plus a bit of hop tea seems unlikely to balance out a beer with OG 86 imo.
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orlando
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Re: Will this beer be too sweet?

Post by orlando » Thu Aug 04, 2016 9:45 am

That's an attenuation of nearly 78% which is pretty good but Jim's point about the IBU level is worth bearing out, I would be looking to something like double that and a good 3 months conditioning to smooth out the bitterness and have it hold up against the malt. However I must use the same caveat as Jim, never used extract. :D
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TheSumOfAllBeers
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Re: Will this beer be too sweet?

Post by TheSumOfAllBeers » Thu Aug 04, 2016 10:22 am

Have you checked your numbers in Brewers friend properly?

Like others I calculated 86-19 as 78% attenuation, when your yeast is rated for higher. I think I have used that MJ yeast and it has saison attenuation characteristics.

Also the attenuation refers to the yeasts ability to eat through malt derived sugars. That candy sugar is 100% fermentable I would think, so your real attenuation is much higher.

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Jocky
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Re: Will this beer be too sweet?

Post by Jocky » Thu Aug 04, 2016 1:26 pm

I haven't run the numbers here to check if your FG is what I'd expect, but if it is that FG it would be way too sweet.

Tremens is fairly dry, and the body comes from higher carbonation.
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