goose bourbon county stout - another stab at it

makes me crazy that no one has nailed this yet. so i am nowhere near experienced enough to know what i am doing but was playing around with the few sadly incomplete recipes that exist for goose's bourbon county stout. what i can't understand is i think i am close - the OG looks good, bitterness is close, color is close. but the FG is way way WAY off. i am getting an estimated FG of 1.022 and am shooting for around 1.040? erk


for reference, from goose:

Beer Bourbon County Stout
O.G. 1.129
F.G. 1.042
% Abv 12.0
%Abw 9.0
IBUs 60
Color 100
Carbs. 45
Cal/12oz 415
Hops UK Styrian
Malts 2-Row, Munich, Chocolate, C-60, Roast Barley, DB Black

What is your mash temp and length.  ROT says to raise mash temp.  Try 2F than repeat if not enough

thanx bonjour. i  think to raise it 20 points my mash temp would be around 425F 

after poking around online i think the only way to do this would be a parti-gyle mash

I do it all the time.  I'm surprised that you got that low of a FG

woops sorry bonjour i think i have misunderstood you. look at the attached file in my first post and tell me what you think. i haven't actually brewed this, i am talking about the theoretical numbers that i am getting from BS. it is giving me a OG of 1.129 (good) and a estimated FG of 1.028 (?? i need to be at 1.040-1.042)? actually now that i re-think this, parti-gyle won't help me any as i need to change my FG, my OG is fine.

Since you haven't brewed this, do it, and mash at 148F. 
I have no Idea where you will finish, but with big beers, and this qualifies, the issue is to get the FG down.  I expect you to get into the mid 30's (1.035 +/-).  No way to tell without a history of how you brew and your results.

Read This.
http://beerdujour.com/Howtobrewabigbeer.htm

many thanx bonjour. so it seems that i shouldn't really go by what the estimated FG is. i am really just following the advice of a thread i read about brewing this http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/bourbon-county-stout-clone-5gal-mlt-358236/ (check out post number 4) where the OP stresses that you need to get the FG above 1.040 or it gets too thin and watery. of course i can't figure out how to do this from the correct OG. it is an interesting problem as i'm fighting the opposite battle of what is usually the case - i am trying to get my FG HIGHER not lower. bcbs is almost pancake syrup, thick and sweet.  thanx for the article.

edit: hah, just to see what it would take to get this recipe to 1.040 i bumped up the OG to 1.185 (!). that did it. of course the abv is now  19.8%          ;D  :

OG         FG1         FG2    FG3         FG4         FG5
129   45           40         35    30            25
              65.1%   69.0%   72.9%   76.7%   80.6%


I thought BS2 used the mid-point attenuation PCTG for the yeast selected:  001 would be 76.5%, the midpoint between 73 and 80%.  So, I would have expected BS2 to estimate 1.030-ish. 

Where is BS2 getting the 1.022 from?  That's crazy high attenuation of 83%.  Ignoring that for the actual brewing, I'd guess low-end attenuation IF you did everything correctly, like really big starter, oxygen, nutrient, etc.  Your recipe has no details on your starter.

I put in June 28 for the tube's date, and it says two tubes and a 2.3Liter starter is needed.  OR four tubes. 

a 5 gallon starter!!!

make an English Mild or other beer with the yeast you will use for this beer.


Oh, and drink your starter.


Fred

i re-entered the recipe with some slight changes (it's tricky because i want to use all munich malt and the original recipe has a mix of munich and munich LME). i have attached the new BS file.

so i actually kind of figured this out, at least from a reality point of view (as opposed to BS). i missed this in the thread mentioned above:

"Estimated Original Gravity: 1.129 SG (1.075-1.100 SG) Measured Original Gravity: 1.129 SG
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.032 SG (1.018-1.034 SG) Measured Final Gravity: 1.042 SG. "

which almost exactly jives with the numbers i'm getting, the numbers i want to get and expect, and also what maltlicker predicted. i would find it hard to believe in real world brewing that i could get a beer starting at 1.129 down to 1.022. even with these new numbers beersmith seems to be off by 10 points which seems like a lot to me? it seems to indicate that BS is not very accurate when it gets up into these large numbers? that seems to make sense from a common sense sort of viewpoint, as i indicated above that when i try to get BS to give me a FG in the 1.040's for this beer it gives me an ABV of almost 20% which is just silly.

What did you change to get the 1.032?  That seems spot on. 

I saw in your Notes that you plan to ferment at 55F.  Perhaps that's a typo, but that's well below the listed minimum ferm temp for the 001. 

The Yeast page now assumes a brand new package with 96% viability.  Even with the oxygen, it's going to require a starter or multiple packages. 

i haven't really looked at a starter yet, i just put in 1 vial yeast as a placeholder. i will build whatever starter is recommended by the mr. malty calculator. as for temp, i was basing this off of the recommendations from the site linked at the top of this thread. it recommends 55F as the optimum temp for big beers. which brings up question #1: i know that people like jamil pitch/ferment quite a good deal lower then the recommended temps for some yeasts so i have always gone by the assumptions that you can do that. i thought the issue was just that it took more yeast, longer amounts of time and sufficient O2. is this wrong?

as for question/comment #2 i have no idea what i did to magically fix the numbers. actually i do know what i did, what i usually do when something seems screwy in BS - i just started over from scratch and it magically fixed itself. i have both files here in the thread and i didn't make any huge changes or change equipment or efficiencies so what happened? it is really hard to compare two BS files side by side as you can only open one at  a time unless someone can tell me how.

** edit - so yes i figured out how to open the two side by side. makes it a lot easier to compare and find what changed obviously. and what changed was i had a different mash schedule in the first one giving me the wrong FG. oops. when i changed it to the correct mash schedule it gave me the more realistic 1.031 FG. thanx for being patient with me guys, i have really learned a lot here in this thread.  :-[

anyhoo, i am going to go with the last recipe listed and do a one gallon trial. i want to wait until bcbs becomes available again so that i have one available to do taste testing/comparisons with. but i will start a new thread when i start to let you all know how it goes.

found my answer to number 1:

"I second that motion. 60 degrees will produce and ultra-clean beer with WLP001. It will also be drier than using the SF lager yeast. WLP001 can even ferment down to 55 degrees with some coaxing. I bet WLP029 (German ale/kolsch) would also work well for a steam beer. You don't necessarily have to use the SF lager yeast for a Cal common."

Sounds like that last quote is about alternatives to make a clean Cal Common, which would max out at 1.054.  Your beer will be double that OG.  I am not sure what they meant by coaxing, but any coaxing would seem more difficult to pull off with twice the OG. 

I read that JZ often pitches and starts lower than the target ferm temp, so if he is targeting 65F, he might chill to and pitch at 62F and let it rise to the 65F on its own.  The goal is a clean ferm character, and I bet you can achieve that by pitching the correct quantity of healthy yeast, and then keeping it at the low end of its typical range. 

Going too low at that high gravity may invite ferm issues?

I would target my ferment at mid 60's for a clean ferment, and I would brew a 5 gal dark mild (3.5% abv) as a starter.

I'm a pitch at or lower than your planned ferment kind of guy.  NEVER pitch higher than that.


Fred

thank you guys!