Forgot to add Dextrose During Boil Can I Add During Fermentation?

[LindyBrew]

So I brewed the Pliny clone this week and forgot to add the dextrose at the start of the boil. The brew is at +2 days from pitching and it's super active right now. I'm wondering if i could boil up the corn sugar and pitch it. My OG was 1.05 after collecting the wort and it should have been 1.07. Anyone been in this situation? How'd it turn out?

 

[J A]

You can add sugar to the fermenter. It's pretty common and I've done it many times. Expect it to re-krausen, maybe pretty substantially if you're adding enough sugar to make up 20 gravity points.

 

[LindyBrew]

Thanks JA. That brings up another point about my efficiency. I collected wort that had a OG of 1.071 before diluting with 1.5G of water which the calcs say take me down to 1.051. If i add a bunch of sugar to bring my OG up how does this affect flavor profiles? Anyone have knowledge on what or any off flavors are added by having a significant amount of dextrose?

 

[J A]

I collected wort that had a OG of 1.071

I assume you mean after boil.
If the corn sugar your adding to the fermenter was part of the recipe and you followed the recipe specifics except for adding the corn sugar late in the boil, then all will be well. If your boil gravity was anything other than what is specified in accordance with your hop additions then the IBUs and hop profile will be off. The basic flavor of the malt won't be changed much by whether you added the sugar in the boil or in the fermenter but hop uptake is dependent on sugars present in the wort and if it was supposed to be there before you added hops, that part will be different.
You have several things going on and it's not clear how and when you deviated from the recipe.

 

[LindyBrew]

The sugar was supposed to be added at the start of the boil. Even though my strike and sparge amounts were as ordered i ended up with less in the fermenter thus the addition of the water. I'm guessing i just didn't get everything out of the grain that i needed to. Usually i hit my pro-boil gravities dead on. Once deviation from my normal process was i had the grain milled and let it sit for a few weeks as life took over. Normally I mill and brew same day. I'll probably brew this one again and see how it turns out if i stick to my normal process 100%.

 

[J A]

Yeah...if you missed a sugar addition at the start of the boil. all bets are off.

 

[jeffpn]

I think I’m 1 for 4 on dextrose additions. I end up saving it to make bacon cure when I forget to put it in my beer.

 

[LindyBrew]

So i went ahead and added 1lbs of dextrose last night. At the point i added it the fermentation was starting to calm down a bit maybe a bubble every 5-10 seconds. 12 hours later and the fermentation kicked back up to a constant flow of gas. I took some comparison video but not sure how i could post that here. I'm guessing that if my hop additions during boil gave up their AAs correctly and the grain and dextrose gets me close on the gravity then i might end up close to where i should have been but time will tell!

 

[J A]

Just the dextrose will make a difference of 8 to 10 IBUs most likely. But then you have something going with your boil volume and topping up? And your 1lb of dextrose in a 5 gallon batch will raise the gravity less than 10 points.
You're just going to have to take what you get with this one and try and figure out exactly what you did along the way. Rebrew it with everything right and see how different it is. It'll be interesting.