first beer

i just tried my first beer. it was a simple brown ale, extract, hops, and yeast with no grains and the flavor is pretty good. it was in the primary for about five days, secondary about a week and a half, and in bottles for 2 weeks and three days. like i said the flavor is good and i would be happy with this but it is quite flat. there is carbonation and a head(which dissipates quickly) but it is quite flat. i added 3/4 of a cup of dextrose in water to my bottling bucket and siphoned the beer on top of that. will it get more carbonated with time or did i screw up? i need help!

It should improve a bit more, I would expect. What temps have the bottles been conditioning at?

they hav been about 70 degrees. im not worried about improvment to flavor it tastes good. any chance they will carbonate more?

Yeah, they should. Temp is right, amount of priming sugar is right, time is still a *little* short *(usually wait three weeks). My first batch, there was a huge difference in carbonation between the second and third weeks, so I've learned to not bother touching them early. You should be fine by the weekend.

Oh, and congradulations! Great feeling, drinking your own beer for the first time!

Ditto what Bird said and keep them at 70. A lot can happen in a week with carbonation plus I have found that if they are too cold they don't make as good of a beer head when poured.

if i use the right amout of dextrose and seal it correctly is there really any chance it wont carbonate with the right amount of time

grrtt78 said:

if i use the right amout of dextrose and seal it correctly is there really any chance it wont carbonate with the right amount of time

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There is always yeast there unless you kill it with chemicals or by heating or freezing. So, it will carbonate. Let nature take it's course.

Great job on Your first batch!!!Its a bummer to have to wait to drink it but it is worth it!! 3 weeks seems to be about my wait too.

last summer, i made my first batch. i wsa not able to goto town to get some of the better supplies, so i made do with what i had. i used normal sugar and bottled in 2 liter pop bottles after 7 days in the pprimary.and let them carbonate for another 7 days. to my surprise it had a pretty good beer, and very carbonated. mabey just beginners luck at the time, but it was sure a nice surprise as i was expecting very little from what i had to work with. just my experiance. enjoy fellas.

Yeah my first batch carbonated ever-so-slowly in the basement (mid to low 60's). I was really concerned, but sure enough over time it came up. Just took it quite a long time....(especially for a first brew!!!! I mean, I wanted to DRINK that sucker lol!).

Congrats, and welcome to the madness

Blender said:

Ditto what Bird said and keep them at 70. A lot can happen in a week with carbonation plus I have found that if they are too cold they don't make as good of a beer head when poured.

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Absolutely...hard to get head when it's too cold.

your beer is carbonating and will continue to ... until your entire glass is ultimately filled with foam! a bigger problem to brewers who BOTTLE is storing the last 20 beers of a 50 bottle batch thats now 6, 7, 8 weeks old. Unless you have refrigerator space for all this beer (and for the 3 batches you have made in the meantime), those puppies are going to get foamy to the point where they are virtually undrinkable.

patience is a virtue while waiting to get the right amount of carb ... but once they are right, they wont remain right long at room temp. get those things chilled quickly.

teu1003 said:

your beer is carbonating and will continue to ... until your entire glass is ultimately filled with foam! a bigger problem to brewers who BOTTLE is storing the last 20 beers of a 50 bottle batch thats now 6, 7, 8 weeks old. Unless you have refrigerator space for all this beer (and for the 3 batches you have made in the meantime), those puppies are going to get foamy to the point where they are virtually undrinkable.

patience is a virtue while waiting to get the right amount of carb ... but once they are right, they wont remain right long at room temp. get those things chilled quickly.

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I've never had beer hang around that long to see, but wouldn't the pressure build up eventually put the yeast down?

either way doesnt the yeast eventually die?

grrtt78 said:

either way doesnt the yeast eventually die?

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the yeast wont die as long as there is something to eat. when it eats, it makes co2. it doesnt simply stop because your beer is perfectly carbed. if you store beer at room temp it will become rediculously foamy.

refrigerating the beer after its carbed right puts the yeast to sleep.

wow thanks for telling me that i would have left them at room temp until they exploded(unless i drank them in a week which is highly likely). so they will age in the fridge as well?

I don't know- I've never heard that they will explode at room temperature. When they eat all the fermentables in the bottle, they go dormant. That's why you put in a set amount of priming sugar, so you have a controlled "mini-fermentation". If you double the amount of priming sugar, you'll have bombs. If you don't, you'll have perfectly carbonated beer. I don't have "all foam" and I've kept my beer around 60 or 62 degrees for months. I'd keep it warmer, but it's winter here, and that's my house temperature. I didn't even bother moving it to the basement where it's cooler- it's fine. I don't make tons of beer, but I've got about 10 cases now, FWIW.

Lorena

I have had beer that was over a year old in bottles without having any foaming issues and they were stored at room temps (65f) in my basement

I recently found a case of mead that was 10 years old. Still carbed, nothing blew up. If you don't over prime you shouldn't have any trouble.

I think Lorenae is right. If all the fermentables are eaten up, then storing them at room temperature won't make an overly carbonated beer. Storing at room temperature can cause the flavors to fade more quickly then if the beer is refrigerated however, so drink up. If you have foamy beers you are bottling too early. Period. I made this mistake with a stout one time and it eventually become too foamy to drink. 4/5th head and 1/5 beer is not a good combination. But it took a couple of weeks to show up as the residual sugar were slowly eaten up.

Ya I agree with not having foam after leaving bottles in a warm place for weeks and even months. It will ferment the priming sugar until it's all gone and then go dormant and fall to the bottom! Now if you have to much sugar it will ferment until it's all gone or the bottle can't handle the pressure anymore and explode. I use 3/4 cup of dextrose and bulk prime it and I have perfect beer after a few weeks...

Cheers... Congrats on the first batch!

LS_Grimmy said:

if you have to much sugar it will ferment until it's all gone or the bottle can't handle the pressure anymore and explode.

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I have never talked to anybody that actually had a beer explode out of the bottle. I suppose it is possible but I think you would really have to screw up. Foam shooting out of the bottle when you open it maybe, but exploding and blowing the cap off? Nah...Those babies can take a lot of carbonation before that happens. Has anyone here actually had a beer bottle cook off and explode???

treehouse said:

I have never talked to anybody that actually had a beer explode out of the bottle. I suppose it is possible but I think you would really have to screw up. Foam shooting out of the bottle when you open it maybe, but exploding and blowing the cap off? Nah...Those babies can take a lot of carbonation before that happens. Has anyone here actually had a beer bottle cook off and explode???

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I've made bottle bombs. It wasn't from too much sugar, it was from not waiting long enough before bottling. I made a really big belgian and it wasn't fermented out when I bottled, so between the unfinished fermentation and the added sugar......boom!

In my early days I experimented with priming sugar and went up to 3.5 teaspoons for a 500ml bottle... and yes caps did go flying and I had lots of beer to drink that night

Yeah to recap, from what others have said in this thread, basically the yeast are converting the sugars that they eat into alcohol and CO2 (and a bunch of other things which contribute flavors etc...both good and bad). So if you bottle before the majority of fermentables are consumed that excess CO2 on top of any new food you give the yeast will give you overcarbonation. The weakest part of the bottle will be the part that gives in this case. Now if you take the bottles and reduce the temperature enough so that the yeast go dormant (this varies by strain, but it is pretty safe to asssume that once they go into a regular refridgerator tempature this will happen) the process momentarily ceases. Ok so if you take that bottle that has not finished the process (there is still more food) and move it somewhere warm(er), the yeast wake back up and continue to munch producing more alcohol, CO2, etc. This is assuming they haven't died. They go into dormancy and have enough reserves for a certain amount of time. Once those reserves are depleted they'll die (this could be a long time). The lower the temperature the more yeast go dormant and the less activity you have, which is why I believe most folks carbonate around high 60's low 70's (generally speaking). I carbonate in the low to mid 60's and it just takes a little longer.

Good recap zoebisch01...

There used to be days back in the dark ages of hombrewing when the concept of priming sugar hadn't occured to many people. What they did was bottle when there were still some fermentables left and let the residual sugars condition and provide the carbonation. Needless to say this could be tricky as many of these Neanderthal homebrewers didn't use hydrometers either. This led to lots of under or over cabonated beer and led to the the overblown (ha!) stories of exploding beer bottles.

Priming sugar: What a concept...

treehouse said:

Good recap zoebisch01...

There used to be days back in the dark ages of hombrewing when the concept of priming sugar hadn't occured to many people. What they did was bottle when there were still some fermentables left and let the residual sugars condition and provide the carbonation. Needless to say this could be tricky as many of these Neanderthal homebrewers didn't use hydrometers either. This led to lots of under or over cabonated beer and led to the the overblown (ha!) stories of exploding beer bottles.

Priming sugar: What a concept...

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lol, thanks. Well it reminds me, folks always say stuff like "well we never had that when I was growing up". I used to think, yeah "BUCK UP SON" lol. But now, I am glad we have the ability to refine and more consistently hit our marks with products, be it homebrew or otherwise. Now I'm not saying we should all split hairs and get too worried about it, but what I do think in general is that we have some great resources at our hands and the more we understand what is going on the more easily we can pinpoint what went wrong :rockin: Best investment I have made in recent years is a digital scale. I use that thing for almost all my homebrew weighing and when I make other recipes and it is so sweet.