Fermenting too low?

Sorry I'm back with more problems, my first brew in my ace boiler was a beer from Brooklyn brew shop book called new year beer, a kinda Belgian ale. I thought everything went well, mash temps were fine. ingredients were
Pilsner
Wheat
Caralight
Caramunich
Candi sugar
Coriander seeds and orange peel
Centennial, tettnanger and Amarillo hops
Fermented with mangrove jacks Belgian ale.
Missed my og but my efficiency has always been ****, got about 55%. When I went to put it into my mini kegs and bottles it had got down to 1004, I was expecting 1015ish. It's been bottled about 3 weeks, opened 1 last night and it's very very dry and bitter. I'm putting the bitterness down to the orange peel having plinth in it but dryness is confusing me? mash temp was 67c? Anything else could make it go that low?

The bitterness and dryness will be related as it'll have fermented out most of the sugar that at an FV1.015 would provide a sweetness to counterbalance the bitterness. Although a bit of pith wouldn't have helped.

Other than the obvious over attenuation, it is hard to identify the issue from the information provided. Some quantities of those ingredients would be helpful in ascertaining any issues. What yeast was recomended in the recipe? And also what type of thermometer did you measure the mash temp with, and have you ever checked its accuracy?

Sadfield said:

The bitterness and dryness will be related as it'll have fermented out most of the sugar that at an FV1.015 would provide a sweetness to counterbalance the bitterness. Although a bit of pith wouldn't have helped.

Other than the obvious over attenuation, it is hard to identify the issue from the information provided. Some quantities of those ingredients would be helpful in ascertaining any issues. And also what type of thermometer did you measure the mash temp with, and have you ever checked its accuracy?

Click to expand...

Ingredients were
3.6kg pilsner
1.36kg wheat
680g caralight
450g caramunich
600g Candi sugar
2 tablespoons coriander seeds crushed
8 small orange peels
10g centennial 60 min
15g tettnanger 30 min
15g Amarillo 5 min
15g Amarillo 0 min

Just used the thermometer on the ace boiler and a cheap pen one I had, the ace read 67c and the cheap one said 66.2c, probably time to invest in a good thermometer?

The yeast will have something to do with it. Some Belgian yeasts are monsters, eating up all the boarderline fermentable sugars in the wort, and MJ Belgian is one of them.

Ha, yep. What IainM said. Thought I'd added an edit about yeast, obviously not.

There is probably a culminate effect of numerous issues, as 10-11 points is quite a large margin to be out. It could be that you have probably mashed a little lower than desired, used a more attenuative yeast than the recipe creator (I'm assuming the recipe didn't specifically recommend Mangrove Jacks as its an american book and not a prominent brand in US) and then there is the discrepancy of using natural ingredients to factor in. Sometimes variances cancel each other out, and sometimes they exaggerate each other.

You may not need a new thermometer, but a better understanding of the one you have. This is a very in depth article on Thermometer Calibration but gives a good gist of the issue.

I use this yeast in a couple of my favourite recipes and they both always finish at 1.006 from about 6.5kg of fermentables mashed at 67C.

One is all malt, the other has 450g each of oats and honey so 1.004 doesn't seem completely unreasonable.

What was your OG?

Dr_Unkenly said:

I use this yeast in a couple of my favourite recipes and they both always finish at 1.006 from about 6.5kg of fermentables mashed at 67C.

One is all malt, the other has 450g each of oats and honey so 1.004 doesn't seem completely unreasonable.

What was your OG?

Click to expand...

Og was 1062, the book recommends wyeast Belgian strong. Will maybe try it again with different yeast and see if there's any changes. The beer is still quite young coming out at 7.6% so hopefully it will improve after another few weeks.

Sadfield said:

Ha, yep. What IainM said. Thought I'd added an edit about yeast, obviously not.

There is probably a culminate effect of numerous issues, as 10-11 points is quite a large margin to be out. It could be that you have probably mashed a little lower than desired, used a more attenuative yeast than the recipe creator (I'm assuming the recipe didn't specifically recommend Mangrove Jacks as its an american book and not a prominent brand in US) and then there is the discrepancy of using natural ingredients to factor in. Sometimes variances cancel each other out, and sometimes they exaggerate each other.

You may not need a new thermometer, but a better understanding of the one you have. This is a very in depth article on Thermometer Calibration but gives a good gist of the issue.

Click to expand...

Cheers will have a look at that, temps have always been something I've struggled with.

Ok, you've gone a little bit over the quoted attenuation for the yeast but it is a real monster, I find it usually does that with my brews.

Maybe try MJ's Belgian Abbey yeast which tastes pretty similar but has quoted attenuation figures around 10% lower, more in line with the yeast in the original recipe.

Just an update on this, time really is a wonderful thing. Opened a mini keg of this end of last week, in keg near 2months and it has turned out really nice, a bit under carbed but spot on. Drank over 3 nights, it was bout 7.5%. Bitterness had mellowed off, nice orange smell and some spice from coriander. Will definitely make this again.