I can't figure out what's going on with my beers.

I have 2 beers going right now and need some advise on both of them. I am working with this recipe right now:

Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse (from Beer Captured)

4 oz Belgian Aromatic Malt
2 oz Acid Malt

6 lb. 5 oz. Muntons Wheat Dry Malt Extract
2¼ oz. Malto Dextrin

1 oz. American Hallertauer @ 3.5% (bittering hop)

¼ oz. Spalt (flavor hop)
¼ oz. Perle (flavor hop)

White Labs #WLP300 Hefeweizen Ale Yeast

1½ cup Muntons Wheat Dry Malt Extract

OG: 1.052

1) Heat 1/2 gallon water to 155, then add the grains. Steep for 30 minutes.
2) Sparge with 1 gallon 150 degree water, then bring wort to boil
3) Add extract & malto-dextrin, top off to 2 1/2 gallons, bring to boil
4) Add Hallertauer...boil 45 minutes
5) Add Spalt & Perle...boil additional 15 mins
6) Cool and top off to 5.5 gallons
7) Pitch yeast


I racked to the secondary on Saturday because it was in the primary for 8 days and I hadn't seen any activity in about 5 days. After I transferred to the secondary, I put the airlock back in and came back about 3 hours later. Needless to say, the airlock was full of beer. I attempted to remove it and got a little bit of a bath. :rockin:

Thanks to this forum I knew that I should replace the airlock with a blow off tube and that proceeded to fill up with beer. Everything calmed down after about 5 hours, but it is still bubbling. Anyone have any clue what is going on? I racked very quietly and didn't do anything different than I did with the last batch.

On to the next question. My first batch, which I bottled on Sunday, was a Brewer's Best Weizenbier kit. When I bottled it, I had a little bit that was left over. I decided to cool it down and see what it tasted like. I must say, that it tasted like crap. It was absolutely horrible. Did I mess something up, or is that normal?

Thanks!

If you started with 5.5 gallons, and then racked to a 5 gal carboy, you probbably just had very little headroom in the carboy. (Your beer has very little hops and a yeast which is not very flocculant, so there was probably verly little trub to leave behind in the primary--hence, a very full carboy.)

It's totally normal for the yeast to get roused back into more active fermentation after racking--I think there just wasn't anywhere for the kreausen to go except out your airlock.

About the first batch tasting "awful," I don't knowe what to say. Green, uncoarbonated beer definitely tastes different than the finished product. How many total days old (since brew day) was it when you tasted it?

Wort before it is fermented will taste very bitter and very sweet. It doesn't taste anything like the final product- Beer. The sweet sugars are converted to alcohol and beer flavors. The hop bitterness mellows with time.

RichBrewer said:

Wort before it is fermented will taste very bitter and very sweet. It doesn't taste anything like the final product- Beer. The sweet sugars are converted to alcohol and beer flavors. The hop bitterness mellows with time.

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By reading what the author wrote, I think he tasted some leftover beer after bottling. So he was trying a fermented sample.

cweston said:

About the first batch tasting "awful," I don't knowe what to say. Green, uncoarbonated beer definitely tastes different than the finished product. How many total days old (since brew day) was it when you tasted it?

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Humm.....I don't have my notebook with me, but it was in the primary for 7 days and then about 8 or 9 in the secondary. So, I would say about 15 or 16 days.

I thought it tasted like beer that had been left out overnight after a party. Flat (obviously ) and really bitter. Not like vinegar, but it did have a nasty taste. I asked my wife and sister what they thought and my wife said that it did indeed taste like beer. My sister on the other hand, almost gagged.

I'm just hoping that I didn't screw up the first batch. I cleaned and sanitized everything really well, but I didn't cover the wort when I was cooling it down in the ice bath. It was sitting uncoved for about 15 minutes, so I hope that didn't do it. The only other thing I did wrong, was that I used tap water, instead of bottled water. I do drink my tap water, so I would hope that isn't it.

A couple ideas:

The least impressive beer I ever made was a wheat beer from a kit (it was part of the Christmas gift in which I reveived my start-up gear.) The LME tasted a bit like the can. It wasn't a drainpour, but it wasn't great, either. I think those kits sometimes sit in the HBS for we don't want to know how long.

Also, what kind of yeast did you use on that first batch?

As far as tap water and leving it uncovered while cooling...tap water ios the only kind of water I ever use. You could get a little chemical taste if tuor tap water is overly chlorinated, but not the taste you describe, I don't think. And leaving it open for 15 minutes id undoubtedly not a big problem. If anything, that might cause some wild yeast to take hold, but that doesn't make a beer taste like what you described--it makes it taste like a plastic band-aid.

You'll just have to see how it tastes after carbing.

cweston said:

A couple ideas:

The least impressive beer I ever made was a wheat beer from a kit (it was part of the Christmas gift in which I reveived my start-up gear.) The LME tasted a bit like the can. It wasn't a drainpour, but it wasn't great, either. I think those kits sometimes sit in the HBS for we don't want to know how long.

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That was what I have heard, and the guy at the HBS told me that it would be bland. Everytime I go into the store, it's always packed. Sometimes, I feel like I'm back at a college party, except everyone is there making beer and not drinking it.

cweston said:

Also, what kind of yeast did you use on that first batch?

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Honestly, I have no idea. It was in a package and the directions said after you dilute the wort, just to sprinkle it on top and slap on the lid. I didn't save the package and didn't keep very good notes on that brew. After reading a lot in this forum (thank goodness for all of you guys here. ), I started to keep a notebook with all of that information.

cweston said:

If anything, that might cause some wild yeast to take hold, but that doesn't make a beer taste like what you described--it makes it taste like a plastic band-aid.

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Yuck, I've never tried a band-aid, but it doesn't sound too good.

cweston said:

You'll just have to see how it tastes after carbing.

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When would you suggest that I do the first taste test? I ended up with 36, 16oz bottles.

Spyderturbo said:

Honestly, I have no idea [what kind of yeast it was]. It was in a package and the directions said after you dilute the wort, just to sprinkle it on top and slap on the lid. I didn't save the package and didn't keep very good notes on that brew. After reading a lot in this forum (thank goodness for all of you guys here. ), I started to keep a notebook with all of that information.

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Therein probably lies your problem. Hefeweizens feature a very simple grainbill (what kinf of malts are used) and very little hops. The flavor pretty-much all comes form the yeast and you can't get a good authentic hefeweizen yeast in dry form. So what you made is probably going to be a pretty boring beer--an American wheat beer. It'll be good for summer drinking, though: serve it good and cold and maybe even with a bit of lemon or (sacrilege!) some raspberry syrup or something.

I usually try to wait at least two weeks before tasting the first bottle.

cweston said:

Therein probably lies your problem. Hefeweizens feature a very simple grainbill (what kinf of malts are used) and very little hops. The flavor pretty-much all comes form the yeast and you can't get a good authentic hefeweizen yeast in dry form. So what you made is probably going to be a pretty boring beer--an American wheat beer. It'll be good for summer drinking, though: serve it good and cold and maybe even with a bit of lemon or (sacrilege!) some raspberry syrup or something.

I usually try to wait at least two weeks before tasting the first bottle.

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The one that tastes bad is the Generic Weizenbeir from the BB kit and boy is it dark. I guess that's from the LME.

The addition of the lemon or orange sounds good. I figured it would need something to "liven" it up. I guess I'll just have to wait until my Franziskaner clone is done to find out what a nice homebrew tastes like.

Thanks!!!