My Dubbel came out ok, but not good enough.What went wrong?

[spiderwrangler]

Carbonation levels? They can have a role in the perception of mouthfeel within a beer.

[grainman]

Carbonation levels? They can have a role in the perception of mouthfeel within a beer.

Carbed to 3 vols forced carbed

[grainman]

First off, I can't really address the lack of body/dryness without tasting it. Finishing at 19 would highly suggest otherwise. I suspect you're picking up on something else, but I couldn't speculate with any degree of accuracy without actually tasting it.

What were you trying to accomplish with your 'starter'? Some may argue otherwise, but I really wouldn't consider that a starter as you didn't accomplish much more than what the nutrient packs did. It may wake them up & get them going, but that's what the smack packs are partially intended for. I doubt you would've gotten much different results than by pitching directly. The timing was too short & the volume was too low to see any significant growth. You would've needed 3, 4 maybe even 5 days with a 5L starter. You also underpitched by roughly 1 smackpack. Without getting out a calculator, I'm roughly counting 300 billion cells needed. If there was a bit of age or mishandling with the packs before you got them it could be even more. I don't have enough experience with that exact yeast to say, but I've got a pretty good idea that is a major contributing factor to your high FG & "fruity as all hell" nose.


To answer your original question regarding the late addition of the sugar, no. Sugar is sugar in this case. It's going to taste a bit different in the final product but only due to the differences in caramelization. That difference in character could potentially be what you're perceiving as off, but again without actually tasting it I can't say with any degree of accuracy. Perhaps you have a club/highly experienced palette nearby?

The starter was done for yeast growth and to have an active fermentation at pitching time. Mr malty calculator showed 2 packs of yeast at 69% viability with a 1 liter starter on a stir plate was good. I pitched the whole starter about 18 hours after making the starter. I know that mr malty's web site says 18- 24 hours is max growth time for yeast, so I was under the impression that I had pitched correctly for this beer. I normally make a 2 qt starter , but I thought 1.5 qts was already bigger than the 1 liter reccomended by mr malty.

[grainman]

Ok , so far , several possibilities here, either A- i under-pitched maybe i could have used more yeast than mr malty reccomended due the the d90 candy syrup addition which would add a lot of simple sugars. Or B- my water is pretty soft , although i do add some gypsum and calcium chloride, i need to check my notes but i don't think I used a whole lot of calcium chloride. Or C - i didn't add the d-90 candi syrup at the beginning of the boil which could have possibly given the beer more caramalization. Or D - I have this beer carbed to 3 volumes.... Would a lower carbonation level help?

[grainman]

Starting off with close to RO water I added 3.7G gypsum, 6.3G Calcium Chloride. Some of those portions went into the mash for PH control, and the rest went into the boil. I start with 8.5 gals in the kettle. I have a very wide kettle that allows for high boil off rate, so I have to start at 8.5 Gals.
I could pour a side by side tasting and add more calcium chloride to 1 sample to see if more minerals make a difference.

[DBear]

What about your O2, what method and for how long?

[grainman]

What about your O2, what method and for how long?

On this batch I used an o2 bottle on a wand with a stone at the end for 2 minutes, in addition to using syphen sprayer on the end of my tubing during wort transfer. I failed to note how fast the ferment took off though.

[spiderwrangler]

Send it in to Dr. Homebrew?