I recently brewed my 3rd batch ever. I bought an Austin Homebrew extract kit for their 20th. It's the English Pale Ale.
The brew went perfect as far as I could tell, trying to fully sanitize everything etc. The OG was what the instructions said it should be, 1.051
Since I live in FL, and the room I was putting my ferming brew in swings temp a little, I put the ferm tub into a larger tub of regular tap water + some starsan (keep out any infection) filled about 1/2 - 2/3 of the way up on the side. There's no shirt or anything on it; I didn't make a swamp cooler. The water temp seemed to hold steady about 66-71 deg F at various times of the day. Ambient temp in the room can be anywhere from 70 to 88 over the last 2 weeks. The instructions said about 68deg.
For the first few days it bubbled the airlock as expected. I didn't smell any foul odors or anything unexpected. It stopped after a week or so, and I figured it was almost done with fermentation.
Today will be 2 weeks since ferm. I took a test sample for the first time. The gravity is 1.011... the instructions say it should be 1.014. Also, I tasted the sample; I don't think it tastes bad, but I was expected a lot more hop flavoring seeing as the recipe used 3 different bags of hops during the boil and it's an EPA. I'm worried the temp has been too low because I kept the tub in water; maybe the yeast went dormant a little.
tl;dr: OG 1.051 FG 1.011 (should be 1.014) - is an EPA but sample doesn't taste hoppy
Thoughts?
-cj
The brew went perfect as far as I could tell, trying to fully sanitize everything etc. The OG was what the instructions said it should be, 1.051
Since I live in FL, and the room I was putting my ferming brew in swings temp a little, I put the ferm tub into a larger tub of regular tap water + some starsan (keep out any infection) filled about 1/2 - 2/3 of the way up on the side. There's no shirt or anything on it; I didn't make a swamp cooler. The water temp seemed to hold steady about 66-71 deg F at various times of the day. Ambient temp in the room can be anywhere from 70 to 88 over the last 2 weeks. The instructions said about 68deg.
For the first few days it bubbled the airlock as expected. I didn't smell any foul odors or anything unexpected. It stopped after a week or so, and I figured it was almost done with fermentation.
Today will be 2 weeks since ferm. I took a test sample for the first time. The gravity is 1.011... the instructions say it should be 1.014. Also, I tasted the sample; I don't think it tastes bad, but I was expected a lot more hop flavoring seeing as the recipe used 3 different bags of hops during the boil and it's an EPA. I'm worried the temp has been too low because I kept the tub in water; maybe the yeast went dormant a little.
tl;dr: OG 1.051 FG 1.011 (should be 1.014) - is an EPA but sample doesn't taste hoppy
Thoughts?
-cj