I need some help trying to rescue a hi-gravity Belgian Ale. The initial gravity was 1.074. The final is 1.024. I used maltodextrin for head retention and mouth feel so I would expect a high final number. I had to bottle without taking a final gravity as my hydrometer was broken.

The problem is the final product is too sweet! Is there a way to fix it? Will the swwetness drop with more bottle conditioning? The batch has been bottled for over a month in swing-top bottles.

I don't know if I am too late on this, but I had a guy in my home brew club that poured his bottled barley wine back into a bottling bucket and re-primed due to lack of carbonation. I personally think it's a huge risk for infection, but we will see how it turns out. So, maybe you could do something along the same line and re-pitch with an appropriate yeast to finish up fermentation. You could also try mixing with other beers. Good luck.

Hmmm...the fact that you already bottled the beer makes things difficult.

Transferring the beer back to a fermenter and repitching might work but it is just asking from problems with respect to contamination, oxidation etc.

Well, difficult problems call for radical solutions.

Beano when added to cooled wort will result in a dryer beer. The enzymes in Beano act break down unfermentable dextrins into sugars that brewing yeast can metabolize.

I believe generally it is generally recommended that one use 3-5 drops in a five gallon batch.

However, I don't believe using more would necessarily be a problem unless Beano really tastes nasty. I doubt if that is the case but I don't really know.

You might try taking a few bottles and adding a drop of Beano to each of them and then recap them.

This may reduced the sweetness of your beer assuming, of course, you still have active yeast. You might want to add a bit of dry yeast when you add the Beano just in case.

This might, however, result in over carbonation and perhaps exploding bottles. So you may need to open a bottle here and there to check on its level of carbonation and sweetness.

By the same token, the Beano might not cause the yeast to really generate that much CO2. If that is the case then the resultant beer could be a bit on the flat side.

A side experiement would be to add the Beano to bottles that are initially at room temperature and some that are quite cold. Once recapped you would then place the bottles in a warmish place than see what happens. The cold bottles should retain more CO2 initially and might have a greater final carbonation which may or may not be a problem.

I realize this is a bit off the wall but....

If you do indeed try this crazy idea please let us know what happens.

- Scott

What was your IBUs for this one? Another direction you could go is add a little bit of hop extract to balance the sweetness if your IBUs are too low.

The beano thought isn't too bad of an idea. However, it will take away alot of your brews body and make it drier.