Beer notes on first brew

Here's what I wrote down for my first brew so far. Am I missing anything that would be good to document? I know there are a lot of procedural mistakes/misunderstandings, and my second batch is fermenting now with a lot of improvements. I'm looking for suggestions on what I should be writing.

11/10/2012 - First batch started. Imperial Nut Brown from Brewer's Best kit:

~3 gallons of water in 5 gal pot.

Stepped at 155-160 for 20 minutes, temp stayed within range checked every 5 minutes:
4oz Chocolate
4oz Caramel 80 Lovibond (term for darkness)
8oz victory

Boil start:
6.6lbs Amber LME
2lb Amber DME
8oz Maltodextrin
1oz Columbus hops

LME added first, pouring slowly and scraping with a spatula to get more out, then DME and maltodextrin added together and stirred in. Boil over risk was non-existent until the hops were added when it foamed up approximately a gallon; did not need to take any action to prevent boil over though.

Flavoring at 40 minutes and Aromatic at 55 minutes:
1oz each Willamette (will LAM it apparently)

No particular changes were noted when these later hops were added.

Cooled to ~85 degrees and siphoned into primary fermenter, assuming the siphoning would cool wort further. Siphoning seemed to "sputter" often, maybe adding air? [in retrospect, I was probably catching on particulate matter] Not much residue left in boil pot, maybe a couple of tablespoons. Added ~1 gallon boiled water and pitched Safale S-04 yeast dry into fermenter, did not take temp at pitch time.

Checked OG, was high and volume was low, so added ~1 gallon straight tap water to primary fermenter and stirred vigously. Some foam at surface prevented a good reading, but it looked like it was on spec at 1.071 OG (note: get sampling cylinder). Sealed lid and airlocked with vodka.

Did not use proper sanitation when cooling wort due to licking the thermometer after readings. Realized this was dumb after a bit and started sanitizing probe between readings. Wort cooled over approximately 45 minutes to an hour in a sink ice bath.

Fermentation visible the next morning, temperature at 72-73.

11/11/2012 - Noticed temps on fermentation vessel at 78 degrees. Put by open window, down to 72 degrees at bedtime. Swirled gently a couple of times, hoping to help equalize internal temperature.

11/12/2012 - In the morning, temp looked around 68-70 degrees. Left it by an open window during the day, temp was down to 63 degrees when I got home. Moved it up onto a table, hoping the temp shock is not too extreme. It still seems to be fermenting happily, though there is a strong apple smell from the airlock.

11/13/2012 - Temp still at 63 degrees in the morning. Bubbler going every 30 seconds, strong apple smell still evident. Moved fermenter away from window. Got home, fermenter around 65 degrees and slower bubbling. Before bed, bubbler continues to slow, calling it a night while fermenter at 67 degrees - moving it a bit closer to the window. Steady temperature control will clearly be a continuing issue without modifying my current setup - perhaps a water bath will help normalize temps.

11/14/2012 - Temp at 65 in the morning, leaving it be for now. The consideration will soon be whether or not to rack to a secondary. Possibly less green apple smell today, bubbler pretty quiet.

11/15/2012 - Temp 66-67, looking good. I've been agitating by turning quickly back and forth, I really don't like sweet notes in most beers and I want to make sure the fermentation process is as complete as possible.

11/17/2012 - Temps staying around 63-65, took a gravity reading at 1.025 which should be high but the beer did not taste especially sweet and in fact was awesome.

11/18/2012 - Gave a sample out to neighbor which wasn't the smartest idea. Hopefully it won't backfire.

11/20/2012 - Up to 68, not a problem at this stage but it highlights how I need to improve my temperature control.

11/25/2012 - Bottling day. Haven't been able to get at temp for a few days, but it was 64 last night.

Being quite dumb, I decided to put the bottling sugar directly at the bottom of the bottling bucket instead of dissolving it in boiled water first. Being more dumb, I only used the bottling cane to stir the wort. I took occasional samples, and the beer at the end was noticably sweeter and also there was some bottling sugar at the bottom of the bucket that hadn't dissolved into the mixture. I attempted to compensate by filling the last bottles up past the normal cane point to at least try to avoid exploding bottles. FG at 1.021... I should have taken more readings but 0.003 difference in a week seemed like it would be stable enough.

Bottled in 8 1L bottles, 4 16oz, and 13 12oz bottles.

11/26 - recapped some of the really topped off bottles to a more normal range. Noticed some slight carbonation in the headspace with a smoky look to it.

11/28 - couldn't wait, pulled bottle with a large amount of headspace, put in freezer for 30 minutes. Nice cream colored head with 2-3 fingers fairly large bubbles that fell to 1/2 finger within 5 minutes. Some yeast chunks settled down after pour and a little left in bottle. Nose is alright, a little sweet. Taste is fairly sweet, little bit of bannana, almost a little bit of soapiness or fusels. Some good beer is definitely somewhere in there, but it's just very "green" I'm hoping; I think it will get better with some age. Hops are present but in the background. Definitely good alcohol content.

These look like some great notes. Very thorough. I like how you wrote down the mistakes you made. I've found that helps me improve my process.

One thing I usually try to record is more info on ingredients (what brand malts/extracts, pellet or whole hops, alpha acid of hops (since that can change from year to year), manufacture dates of yeast. That way if you make something that is really great it is easier to reproduce it.

Thanks, I'll definitely do that. So far I've just been getting supplies from my LHBS, which seems to be more or less exclusively breiss for grains/extracts. I understand they're pretty darn good. I've been getting my hops as pellets in foil packs but I don't have any on hand right now - should it give that particular crop's alpha acid on there or do I need to look it up somewhere?

Great note taking.
Couple things that I saw in there. You need to get the temperature down before you picture the yeast and as you discovered you need to figure out how to control fermentation temperature better.

There's a few other little things but I think you got a pretty good handle on picking out your mistakes.

A lot of people don't take notes like they should and yours are exceptional.
That's going to go a long ways towards making you a much better brewer.

Great note taking. But you should have left it in the fermenter at least another week. 14 days to short and maybe that's why you FG was 21. I always go 3 weeks and never check until bottling day. Kit makers want you to move on faster so you can buy another kit sooner. Most of use go 3 weeks fermenting and 3 weeks in bottle.

Important to get your wort down to fermenting temp after pitching yeast. Your first day is perhaps most important on temp. Your 72-78 was two high. The rest of the days temps looked ok.

I'm sure you 'll have a good beer and the next will be even better.

C-Rider said:

Great note taking. But you should have left it in the fermenter at least another week. 14 days to short and maybe that's why you FG was 21. I always go 3 weeks and never check until bottling day. Kit makers want you to move on faster so you can buy another kit sooner. Most of use go 3 weeks fermenting and 3 weeks in bottle.

Important to get your wort down to fermenting temp after pitching yeast. Your first day is perhaps most important on temp. Your 72-78 was two high. The rest of the days temps looked ok.

I'm sure you 'll have a good beer and the next will be even better.

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This isn't really true. Beers are different. You can taste the difference between a Blue Moon and and Imperial IPA and they should be treated differently in the fermenter too. A nice light colored wheat beer can be out of the fermenter in 10 days and be great but that barleywine needs months. The darker the color of the beer and the higher the OG, the longer they need in the fermenter to make them taste good. When you do your next brew take these into account. That Imperial Nut Brown probably should have spent 5 weeks in the fermenter and another 5 in the bottles because of its higher OG and somewhat darker color.

I appreciate the feedback. I pulled it because FG was in the range specified by the kit (it actually said one week might be enough, craziness) and I was impatient, but I'm definitely going for another week or two in the future, and I'll be sure to take my gravity readings properly.

On yeast pitching, I'm thinking that if I pitch at 75 ish and cool it down to 65 within a couple of hours that will be pretty good?

I worked out a cooling method that does aeration at the same time and works very quickly - I've label stripped a 2 liter bottle and thoroughly sanitized, filled with water 3/4 of the way up and froze it. Then I pull it out of the freezer, sanitize again for a couple of minutes, and use it to violently stir the wort while the boil kettle is in an ice bath. Cooled my second batch completely in about 6 minutes. Thoughts?

gelatin said:

I appreciate the feedback. I pulled it because FG was in the range specified by the kit (it actually said one week might be enough, craziness) and I was impatient, but I'm definitely going for another week or two in the future, and I'll be sure to take my gravity readings properly.

On yeast pitching, I'm thinking that if I pitch at 75 ish and cool it down to 65 within a couple of hours that will be pretty good?

I worked out a cooling method that does aeration at the same time and works very quickly - I've label stripped a 2 liter bottle and thoroughly sanitized, filled with water 3/4 of the way up and froze it. Then I pull it out of the freezer, sanitize again for a couple of minutes, and use it to violently stir the wort while the boil kettle is in an ice bath. Cooled my second batch completely in about 6 minutes. Thoughts?

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That slightly warm wort will start the yeast pretty quickly and then cooling it should keep the off flavors out. You might find that cooling it a bit more will be beneficial, depending on the yeast.

those are really good notes

Good notes. One of the things that I do is to write the actual time of day down at each step in the process.

12:00pm - Start boil
12:30pm - Start grain steep at 155*
1:00pm - End grain steep at 165*
ect,...

It helps me to stay focused and gave me a better sence of how long the individual steps as well as the whole brew day take. You may not need to do it, but I like to.

Like everyone else said and you know already controling the fermentation temp looks to be your biggest challange. I had the same problem. I got lucky and found a working chest freezer on craigslist dirt cheap and purchased a temp controller. My beer, which was good before, got noticably better and I no longer needed to keep checking the temp. Good luck.

RM-MN said:

This isn't really true. Beers are different. You can taste the difference between a Blue Moon and and Imperial IPA and they should be treated differently in the fermenter too. A nice light colored wheat beer can be out of the fermenter in 10 days and be great but that barleywine needs months. The darker the color of the beer and the higher the OG, the longer they need in the fermenter to make them taste good. When you do your next brew take these into account. That Imperial Nut Brown probably should have spent 5 weeks in the fermenter and another 5 in the bottles because of its higher OG and somewhat darker color.

Click to expand...

If you want to get technical then yes it's not "really true", but for most ales made of barley it is mostly true. Yea there are the exceptions, but for the most part I stick by my statement.

I was just thinking about my logs and how giving better times on the actual brew might help, I'll definitely try to do that. Here are my second batch logs... Going to be starting a third batch this weekend, I am so very addicted. I call this log "airlock adventures".

11/25/2012 - Pumpkin amber,

2.5 gallons in 5 gal pot, boiled down to around 2 gal

Stepped at 163-167 for 20 minutes, temp stayed within range checked every 5 minutes. Tried to stay near the lower end of the range, seems a bit high but I don't know enough about steeping/mashing to say how that effects things other than that above 170 is bad. Steeping should be done for longer from reading things online?
8oz Caramel 60L
~1.8 pound can pumpkin mash, dried and caramelized in oven under broiler for short bursts of 5-10 minutes, lost a lot of water and was a solid brown when it was steeped. Did not take a final weight, definitely a lot less than 1.8 pounds, maybe 1/3-1/2 of that or less.

Boil start:
7 oz brown sugar
3lb Light DME
1/2 oz Northern Brewer

At 55 minutes: 3/4 teaspoon McCormick pumpkin pie spice

Cooled with a ice bath and stirred with a 2 liter pop bottle that had been sanitized and frozen full of water. Good cooling period, less than 10 minutes. Aerated a lot by stirring roughly. As long as this doesn't result in contamination, until I can get a better wort chiller it's great.

Poured into a sanitized 3 gallon better bottle carboy filled with less than a gallon of cooled boiled water. Very near the top though, so worried about blow off. Used a funnel with a filter this time; it kept clogging, so it took a long time and repeated scraping with the stirrer to get everything through, but there was a lot left in the funnel, so hopefully that will help clarificaiton and off flavors if I didn't get an infection from the long funnel time. Funnel time was maybe 30 minutes. I need to track times better. Sealed with bung and areated more by shaking roughly with my thumb over the opening. Airlocked and let stand.

Concerned about blowoff, so I'll need to check it repeatedly. Pitching temp 76 degrees, put near window. Going to monitor temps better for this one.

OG: 1.050, had to reopen and use a sanitized turkey baster for a reading (~30 minutes after pitching) near an open window because I forgot to get an OG. Another infection risk... Temp already coming down nicely to 70 after less than an hour.

11/26/2012 - Temp around 63-65 in the morning, nice krausen. A little concerned about light, I should get a darker covering material. Currently using multiple layers of a light blue sheet.

11/27/2012 - Woke up and airlock had blown off together with the bung. Didn't hear it, and it took me a while to find the airlock a few feet away. Sanitized the bung, attached a blowoff tube I sanitized the end of. Tube is pretty thin, hope it doesn't clog. Fermenter also near open window, so it was exposed for a while. After a few minutes I pulled the bung and ran a paper towl soaked in sanitzer around the rim. When I re-airlock I will want to make sure to clean around the top edge again. Blowoff tube goes to sanitizer solution, bubbling away right now. Temp around 63-65 still. Threw away sheet, it was ripped in the first place and now covered in krausen junk. Re-covered fermenter with a dark towel. In the future, I should attach a blowoff tube earlier when I notice the krausen coming anywhere near the top in the first day.

11/28 - Temp down to 61-62, fermentation rate greatly slowed, hopefully not a clogged blowoff. Maybe go back to airlock tonight, or wait until tomorrow morning. Moved a little aways from the window since it looks like the hot and fast phase is slowing.

Moved back to airlock filled with diluted star san. Wiped fermenter entrance with paper towel soaked in star san. There's been a bit of krausen in the airlock, but that's been rinsed I think it should be good from here on out. I cleaned and reset airlock. Temp at 65 at bedtime.

11/29 - Temp sitting at 65 still. Airlock blew off the middle component covering the center hole, but plug still secure. Sanitized and reset plug and airlock, but when I pulled the airlock standing liquid in the plug looks to have entered the fermenter. Hoping that's not going to lead to too much of a problem; nothing to do about it now but in the future if I see standing wort in the plug I need to pull the whole thing first. There was significant krausen/sediment in the airlock that took a couple of minutes to come off with oxygen based cleaner.

Came home and airlock was still looking pretty. Think the worst is over. Temps still at 65.