Spindelprobe after one day

Yesterday, after consultation with one of the colleagues at work who has been brewing beer for a couple of years, I decided to stretch the beer. You might have seen from the previous post that I had a Stammwürze of about 15,6° Plato before the yeast went in. That is a bit too high. The recipe said that it should be about 13° Plato (which tends to end up as a beer with about 5,2% ABV). If I didn't intervene I'd end up with about 19l of a strong Vollbier - almost Bockbier. There's nothing bad to be said about a good Bockbier, but 19l of it is too much. I wanted a more standard beer - around 5% or 5,2% ABV and nicely rounded. Not 8% ABV and too sweet.

So, I decided to use the high gravity procedure - by coincidence really. High gravity means you deliberately brew to a high Stammwürze and then stretch the amount by adding cooked water. That way, you can expand how many litres you get, depending on your storage. In my case, my fermentation keg is 60l and my filling buckets hold 34l. This means I could theoretically fill over 30l of beer with no problem. My limiting factor is my Silvercrest cooker. That can only hold about 26l - less if you want to cook at 100°C. For the first Sud it was actually the SIlvercrest that limited the volume. I could have added at least another litre of wort. Anyhow, by coincidence I'll be using the high gravity method - not to increase the return of finished beer, but to reduce the ABV of the beer. Essentially, it is diluting. However, by diluting while the yeast is still active, I'll be changing the fermentation process itself, rather than just diluting the Jungbier when it's finished.

The Spindelprobe of Jungbier had 7,2% leftover sugar, meaning the fermentation is nowhere near finished. Right now it is still blubbering away - though the C02 concentration is certainly nowhere near where it was yesterday (expected). The beer tastes a bit wild - the underlying taste is good, but it is too fizzy (expected) and the flavour isn't rounded yet. The hops/bitterness was good, so I'm hoping the 2l of water won't take the edge off that. I'll tap another Schnappsglass this evening to see how it's coming along.