[pelipen]

Originally Posted by CDGoin

It had a lager style yeast, the kit said you could do it both ways (So maybe there is a yeast that can work both ways..?) This is the kit I used

Could I have kept it at the 1.075 range at 5 gallons and been OK. I was concerned the OG was too high.

Depends on the dry yeast. Something for a california common could go either way but still you're talking cool ale temps for best results. A true lager yeast is best kept in the 50's.

Kits tend to be about 80% of what you need to know to make drinkable beer, without a lot of equipment or a book of procedures. For example, most people here would not recommend pitching dry yeast directly into wort (though many do, and I have). The next level of details you can get on this forum, like what to expect from 2lbs of honey in the boil. Might dry it out.

OG is style related, but also personal preference. If you like it, drink it. If you are brewing for competitions, follow styles. So, 1.075 is somewhat up to what you like. It will ferment, just be sure you can add enough oxygen for bigger beers and use yeast pitch rate calculators.

Worst case, you lose some ingredients, and change things for next time.

[CDGoin]

I did activate the yeast before pitching.. I do occasionally listen and absorb what I read.. (Sometimes I'm just hard headed..)

Anyway, since I knew 1.060 was in the "Safe" starting range of the hydrometer for beer and wasn't sure of 1.075 was, I bumped up the water to 1.062. I am running low on room in the fermentor (1-1/2 gallon of space) but temps are in the mid-50s in the garage without me turning up the heater. So perfect for the lager yeast, but wasnt sure about keeping in on the yeast longer, and then just cold crashing.. Instead of lagering in the frig to give the yeast more time to do their magic.

Will probably secondary to give them a small boost of oxygen and clean up the beer.

One of these days I will go by the recipe.. but thinking its just time to ditch the pre-made recipes (Since I don't pay any dang attention to them anyway ) and take the dive into all-grain. At this point I only need a mashtun.

I think I will wait though for these two batches to age up and then find out how good or bad I am at this first before moving on. Can't learn from my mistakes, or my successes if I don't drink the beer first to know if I have had either.

[GarageDweller]

in the meantime get some books on brewing and read them. you can check out Palmers "How to Brew" for free online. experimenting is great if you have a baseline for your procedures, but without any background on proper brewing techniques, you are not able to quantify anything you are experimenting with. that is, you won't know if your tests are changing anything because you have yet to set any kind of standard procedure. you are in the right place, keep going man!

[CDGoin]

I have been reading a lot, here and in books.

With my Engineer background.. I tend to like to fiddle with things.

I also would like think that I am a pretty good cook and baker.

Add all three together and I know enough to be dangerous, and I'm willing to experiment. Which is probably why after two batch runs I still have yet to do a recipe "by the book"..

Can't wait to find out what my final results will be. I figure between the stout and a ocktoberfest I will know if my instincts are good.. or bad.

If Bad, I will go back to basics and do a few more extracts and stick to the recipes

IF Good, on to all-grain and more experimenting