Need some help with fixing dryness

Wow that is so dry. How did you manage that?

 

Do you have more beer than what the recipe is supposed to make? That will explain a low FG but not necessarily the dryness.

 

Probably infected...or the next NEIPA craze

 

This is a problem I’ve never tried to fix before. My guess is you could boil a cup of maltodextrin in a cup of water just long enough to dissolve and pasteurize it to make a syrup. Then dose your beer with the syrup. I use a cup of it in a milk stout I make to help with mouthfeel but I add it to the boil. You’re a little late for that.

 

You could always add lactose at packaging to increase your FG, but that still leaves the question of why you had this increased attenuation.

Before I'd do anything I'd make sure to calibrate my hydrometer or refractometer. If that's OK, I'd think about contamination. Specifically, var. diastaticus, but brett sp. could also be the culprit. Have you brewed any saisons, brett beers, or done any mixed fermentations lately?

 

Keep in mind my suggestion is only treating the symptoms, it’s not affecting the reason for the low gravity. My guess is you have an infection of some sort and a thorough tear down and sanitation check is probably in order. Good thing you’re kegging so bottle bombs aren’t a concern. Package it up and enjoy it while it still tastes good.

 

What yeast did you use?

 

Did you mash at 148? Have you used this equipment with a belle saison?

 

Do you ferment in plastic?

 

I echo @EvenMoreJesus suggestions. First order of business is to test your equipment. Don’t shit yourself over a faulty hydrometer.

Assuming that’s fine, it’s likely a contamination. Diastaticus is probably the culprit. It’s been on the rise lately and is a huge industry problem. Diastaticus exists in the environment, can be present in lab-grown ‘pure’ pitches, and can appear in starters and harvested yeast. Unfortunately, testing for it really isn’t practical on the homebrew level.
Your senses are your best guide. Look for thinness, cidery flavor, or phenolics, which was the clue that tipped off Left Hand.

Next, it’s time to seriously clean the brewery. Boil everything that is glass or metal. Plastic parts that can’t be boiled can be sterilized at a lower temperature for more time. 20min. at 165° should be good. Or you could just replace them.
You might also want to give everything a good hot soak in a strong cleaner (like caustic or PBW) AND a second soak in an acid (like nitric-phos). Make a day of it and leave no stone unturned. Toss any harvested yeast and start out fresh.

Finally, a bit of caution. If you keg, you've got nothing to worry about, but if you have any bottles of homebrew sitting around, throw some safety glasses on and move them to a safe contained space, like a cardboard box in the basement. Exploding glass is extremely dangerous.

 

Is there a reason its on the rise?

Cheers!

 

My guess is that it's hard as shit to kill. I had an issue after using belle saison. Luckily I use buckets and just tossed them all. As a test I cleaned my hydrometer tube before and after each reading but would always leave finished beer covered with foil to see if belle saison was still living in the tube and after a few days the final gravity of the finished beer would drop to 1.0. It survived oxiclean, pbw, star San, liquid soap. Seems as though if you cant completely scrub it a few cells will survive.

 

If you keep your beer containers cold this might not be a huge problem, although 6 days into fermentation on a big beer such as the OP's might be totally different.

"In addition to its detection, the growth rate of something like Diastaticus is difficult to assess. Product that’s stored cold will have very different infection results, sometimes to the point of no effect at all, compared to product stored warm on a shelf or transported across the country—or, in the case of Left Hand and other larger producers, the world."

From: http://goodbeerhunting.com/sightlin...ntamination-in-the-wake-of-left-hands-lawsuit

 

There are a lot of theories, but so far, the best minds in yeast microbiology haven’t come up with anything concrete.

Some think it’s the explosion of breweries, which has resulted in less experienced cellarmen with perhaps poor SOPs.

I’ve also heard that it could be the increase in number and growth of yeast companies, subsequent impure pitches being shipped out, and the popular practice of breweries sharing yeast.Ra

Maybe my favorite theory is that the diastaticus is growing increasingly resistant to the sanitizers that have been commonplace for the last few centuries. Kind of how we have ‘superbugs’ that have grown resistant to (over)prescribed antibiotics.

One observation that has been made is that sanitizer selection may have a role in risk. It seems to be a contamination that grows in vessels, not hoses or parts. This may be because the latter is usually sanitized with iodine, or it could be because they are commonly heat-sani’d, while vessels are not.

Regardless, the most common sanitizers for tanks are usually PAA and ClO2, and breweries who use the latter seem less likely to have diastaticus issues.

 

I have been homebrewing for over 20 years and I sanitize with a bleach/water solution. I would be willing to bet BIG bucks that Diastaticus would be killed by that.

Cheers!