Fizzycist

Recipes 

Get ready for a novel. Sorry it's long.

Today I actually had my first beer brewing since I finally got my cider bottled. It didn't really go smoothly. I know standard responses here, RDWHAHB, instead of beer I made beer, but it was slightly frustrating the things that didn't work as planned. So I'm just looking for some commiseration. It was a slightly modified Deception Cream Stout. Modified mostly because I read some amounts wrong, did a poor job of measuring and didn't want to mess with liquid yeast. Here is the entry from my brewing journal.

3.3 lbs Breiss Amber LME
~1.5 lbs Breiss Amber DME
1 lbs Bavarian Wheat DME
1 lbs Chocolate Malt
.75 lbs 60L Crystal Malt
.5 lbs Roasted Barley
.75 oz American Magnum (60 min)
1 Whirlfloc (10 min)
½ lbs lactose (10 min)
½ tsp Wyeast yeast nutrient (5 min)
1 pack Safale S-04

2/5/12 (Brew day)
Method: (assume proper sanitization, which might be a big assumption)
Unfortunately I didn’t measure any of the water. Also, I didn’t weigh out the amber DME, just guessed at ½ a 3 lb pound bag.

Anyway, brought about 4 gallons to 155 degrees, steeped the chocolate and crystal malts and roasted barley for 30 minutes in a paint strainer bag. Didn’t measure ending temp, grains filtered out nicely. Added more water to about 6 gallons, brought to boil. Added all the DME and hops pretty quickly with brew buddy stirring. Didn’t realize I was supposed to wait till after hot break to add hops. Hot break came quickly though, like 10 minutes. Boil went smooth, like a just barely roiling boil. Other things all went in on time.

After boil, it looked like about 4 gallons again. The pot was really wide, must have lost more liquid than expected. Put the pot in ice water, got it down to 75 ish pretty quick. Topped off with some more water, don't know how much cuz we didn't measure before boiling the top off Gravity was really high, like 1.080. Had to boil more water, never measured how much, ran the risk of boiling, cooling outside, adding water to carboy, just blegh. Good chance I screwed up sanitation in there somewhere, but I just went nuts with the iodophor, so hopefully it’s ok. Don’t know final volume, looks 5.5 ish, but OG at 1.059 at 75 degrees. Pitched the yeast on top, then drove my carboy home, so it got all shook up. Fixed on the blow off tube but the stopper looks kinda not sealed around the tube.

Edit: oh yeah, it took about 2 hours longer than expected, waiting for top off water to boil and cool.

eastoak

Recipes 

if you didn't measure anything it's hard telling what's going on but i would kick back, relax and think about the next beer where i would measure things better.

Fizzycist

Recipes 

Well, 5 hours after pitching there is some super thick, dark brown foam forming on the surface in the carboy so I'm feeling ok. Yeah, my brewing buddy didn't measure the water when he poured in to boil, and I haven't marked the water levels on my carboy. Perhaps I shall...

Frodo

Recipes 

I don't get what made this unsmooth??? Sounds like a typical brew day, but maybe I'm missing something.

Fizzycist

Recipes 

Maybe I just had unrealistic expectations. But I had to boil top off water twice, I don't actually know the volume I have in primary, and I didn't really get the recipe right. So, I'm sure I'll have beer in 4 weeks and I'll try not to expect anything beyond that. At least I didn't have a boil over.

mid_knight

Recipes 

The real problem is gonna be this: it will be the best beer you have ever tasted! And you will spend years trying to duplicate the recipe ... And never will! Lol.

Fizzycist

Recipes 

I think I took pretty good notes, so let's hope I get plagued with this problem.