I brewed a big IPA using US-05, I hand wrote the recipe on the fly and was planning a 90 min boil where I would add hops every 5 mins, this should of given me a nice 8-9% hoppy IPA.
This was my second brew of the day and I drank my way through the first one so writing a recipe for the second without using the calculator was probably not the best idea, looking back at it now I realise my mistake. I worked out that 200 grams of hops over 90 mins was 5 grams every 5 mins with 10 grams FWH and 10 in the cube. Many beers later and 3 hours in to the boil I realised my error
Now as it was 2am by this point and I'd been drinking all day instead of being sensible and adding water to bring the gravity down a bit I thought this could be a great beer so I stuck it in the cube. The next day I put it in the carboy and added some US-05. It started at 1120 and finished at 1030 making it 11.9%.
I bottled it adding dextrose to carbonate but 4 weeks on nothing. Tastes great but no carbonation. A bit of research suggests that the US-05 only works up to about 12% so I'm guessing that's my problem.The beer is in swing tops so I was thinking of adding some fresh yeast to see if it helps but I have 2 concerns.
1) If I use US-05 again it will do nothing as its 12% already
2) If I use a yeast with a higher alcohol tolerance there is still plenty of sugars in there to make some great tasting bottle bombs
Any ideas would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Chris
