How long until you had a beer you really liked?

We've done several beers now over about 5 months and results are discouraging.

1 - Porter (infected, undrinkable)
2 - IPA (too sweet, too carbonated, somewhat drinkable)
3 - Oatmeal Stout (strange off-flavors, most drinkable thus far)
4 - Stout (underpitched, too sweet, somewhat drinkable)

No way am I going to give this up, but dammit, when am I going to have a beer that's good?

Been sanitizing and cleaning a lot. Using all glass on the last 2.

So how long did it take you folks to produce something good?

Every beer I've made has been good

From the very start, but the first batch benefited from some aging. Are you doing extract? What is your water like?

No offense but it sounds mainly like brewer error thus far, keep practicing on your procedures and the beer will get better. The first recipe I modified was awful but other than that I have been lucky enough to produce decent beers.

Extract. Been using well water.

Make a "simple" beer for confidence. I started with an extract Amber and a Pale Ale. Both turned out great. Working on a Wheat and a Porter now and gradually stepping up to add flavors (oak and bourbon to the porter and Blueberry to the wheat). Then get to the heavier and more complex reciepes. I know you brew what you like, but some of the more complex flavors take more steps and time to get right, and the process is amplified with less room for error. Just take it slowly and it will turn out fine.

themack22 said:

Extract. Been using well water.

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Just to see if it's the water, try using bottled reverse osmosis water for one batch. Use a good quality dry yeast (S05 for American beers, S04 for English beers) and keep the fermentation temperature at 66 degrees, using an ice bath if you have to. Using a kit from a good reputable store (Northern Brewer has lots, so does Austinhomebrew), that should give you a good beer.

Try that, and see if it fixes your issues. If it doesn't, then we can look into more techniques.

IPAs are tough in a partial boil due to the hops isomerize, but most other styles should be very doable with an extract batch even with a partial boil.

msujack said:

Make a "simple" beer for confidence. I started with an extract Amber and a Pale Ale. Both turned out great. Working on a Wheat and a Porter now and gradually stepping up to add flavors (oak and bourbon to the porter and Blueberry to the wheat). Then get to the heavier and more complex reciepes. I know you brew what you like, but some of the more complex flavors take more steps and time to get right, and the process is amplified with less room for error. Just take it slowly and it will turn out fine.

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You make a great point that I can't seem to get across to my partners.

I am brewing with two other buddies and they keep gunning for very complex stouts and IPA's. I keep saying we should do something easier.

Currently we have an amber and a hefe going at my buddy's house. I have taken two of our beers home with me to ferment because he's pretty lazy and doesn't read up on this stuff. I had to teach him how to make a blow-off over the phone and it took forever for him to figure it out.

I just need to reign it in I think.

I've brewed three batches of beer and prepared a batch of mead and a batch of cider so far. Of these, the mead and cider and the third beer are still in carboys. The first two beers are bottled, and only the first of those is finished.

The first was very good, and all indications are that the second will be as well.

I strongly advise following the advice above and going to a simple, easy recipe. I started with an extract ordinary bitter, just light DME and 12 oz of steeped crystal malt, with one hops variety. I used Nottingham dry yeast, which is known to be a fast, complete fermenter, with little risk of off flavors as long as you can keep it cool---and it's good to low temperatures, enabling you to err on the cold side with no risk. It's a low gravity beer---1.035 I think---so it ferments fast regardless of yeast. According to Papazian, it can go from kettle to pint glass in 3 weeks, although I gave it 3 weeks in the carboy and 3 weeks bottle conditioning just to be sure.

While I'm sympathetic to jumping in feet-first, it seems that you guys tried it with poor results. I wouldn't sweat the infected batch, other than to learn the lesson to be obsessive about cleaning. However, based on the other results it seems that you need some help with recipes. I would suggest either going to a kit recipe from a big name, or dialing back the complexity and following or personalizing a very simple recipe for the next one.

What do your buddies think of your results so far? If they're less than thrilled, you should be able to make a case that a simple beer that comes out well is better than a complex-but-off result.

By the way, part of the reason I started with the ordinary bitter, besides its being the simplest style to produce, is that they're uncommon in the US. So, while it's not complex, it's fairly unique. Since making it, I've found a couple commercial examples, but it was still a fun experiment. Fortunately, I found that my beer stood up very well against the others.

Good luck, most important thing is to keep at it. One way or another, you'll get things dialed in.

First, just make a style that you like, if it is an IPA, so be it. For the most part, one beer is not more difficult to make than others, but i would stay way from very high gravity beers.
Make sure everything is clean and sanitized, if your using liquid yeast, make an appropriate starter, if your using dry yeast, rehydrate using instructions on package.
Aerate well, and try to keep below 70f (generalizing here, but if you keep the beer in a 65F room, you should be good).
doing that should get rid of most of your problems, for the carbing thing, you can use this calculator to determine the amount of sugar to use:
http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html?14613607#tag

good luck on your next brew.

Yep keep it simple and focus on the important things like temperature in all cases, and time.

My first batch was pretty blah, second batch was quite good, my third was lots of fancy ingredients and it was not very drinkable, fourth was really good. From there until now at batch..err...30 (maybe?) I've had only one (batch 5...) that had any significant troubles. The rest have been really good.

It seems like your brewing partners might be adding in too many variables. Any chance you can brew one solo so you have complete control over every step??? Plan a brew day when you know they can't make it and go from there. Then if you still have problems with a simple recipe we can fine tune and nitpick your processes. Until then, keep your head up and your eyes on the prize! Cheers

My first two batches were terrible, kits with bad instructions and that led to under pitching and hot fermentation. I had given up, went two years without brewing.

When my brother got hurt on his motorcycle we started talking about making another beer, scoured the internet and found this site, built a cheap mash tun and chose to make ed's hefe. Even with all the info we had we still had a few problems but it was so much fun and the beer was absolutely delicious, every batch since then had been better and better.

All you need to do is find an easy recipes and pay close attention to detail, once you get a really good beer made it is impossible to stop.

Coopers Canadian Blonde - 2 weeks
Coopers dark Ale - 6 weeks
Coopers English Bitter - 4 weeks
Coopers IPA - 4 Weeks

It is so true that the higher ABV and the darker the beer the longer it takes. I usually try to make sure I have a quick conditioning beer on the go all the time so the dark ones can mature.

I want to quote everyone, but it's just too much. Thanks for all the kind words and encouragement.

As far as cheating on the group and doing one solo, I've been thinking about it a lot and I have no qualms with doing that. I have all the equipment, sans carboys. Might need to grab another one.

The hot temps thing is bothering me. Do I really want to spend a week keeping it in an ice bath? I guess if I want good beer I need to.

themack22 said:

The hot temps thing is bothering me. Do I really want to spend a week keeping it in an ice bath? I guess if I want good beer I need to.

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Yes, absolutely.. That and pitching enough yeast will do more then you could imagine for quality of beer.

I brewed 3 kits that were just "Ok" and then my very first partial mash recipe I created came out fabulous...so good that I drank those before I finished the rest of the bottles from the kits I had made 2 months before!

I agree with Yooper about the kit. I brewed a few crappy batches at first trying to make my "perfect" beer right from the beginning. Go to Northernbrewer, pick one of the beginner styles that you like, and make that exactly. That way, if the beer isn't good, you know it wasn't something with the recipe, yeast used, etc. It had to be something process involved, and you can start narrowing down any issues you might be having. And I can't say this enough, temperature control your fermentation. Keep those ales at least in the sixties. It can work at room temp in the seventies, but your results will be much better.

themack22 said:

We've done several beers now over about 5 months and results are discouraging.

1 - Porter (infected, undrinkable)
2 - IPA (too sweet, too carbonated, somewhat drinkable)
3 - Oatmeal Stout (strange off-flavors, most drinkable thus far)
4 - Stout (underpitched, too sweet, somewhat drinkable)

No way am I going to give this up, but dammit, when am I going to have a beer that's good?

Been sanitizing and cleaning a lot. Using all glass on the last 2.

So how long did it take you folks to produce something good?

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4 beers, all different, all bad. The oatmeal stout is complicated.
Stop jumping around from style to style and fix you're mistakes.
Make a simple pale/amber ale. Take notes on boil,pitching,fermenting. make the same exact recipe again concentrating on problems encountered with the previous batch.

themack22 said:

The hot temps thing is bothering me. Do I really want to spend a week keeping it in an ice bath? I guess if I want good beer I need to.

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You answered your own question. If you don't mind off-flavors in the beer, then temperature control wouldn't be an issue. But if you want a beer with commercial quality taste, you'll just have to keep it in the mid 60s. That can be in a water bath, a basement, a fridge with a temperature controller, etc, but without controlling the temperature you will not have "good beer".

I have enjoyed every brew I have made so far, and so has most everyone else (at least those that prefer the parallel styles). I also brew with 1-2 other people each time, since I am the anally retentive one, it works rather well, we use timers for everything and are meticulous about temperature notations.

What has helped me improve my beers is to take exceptionally good notes during brewing. Yes a lot of un-needed information, but more is better.

I write down start time, grain temps, mash tun temps, mash temps at intervals, sparge water temps, gravity of beginning, end, and mixed preboil runnings, boil temps, boil times, time to get to boil, wort chiller times, sanitization steps..I try to write down everything and continually know what is going on. Then when I taste the beer later, I can look at my steps and say, you know, maybe it would have been more the body I wanted if I had mashed 1-2 degrees lower, etc, etc.

In my experience with most everything from hot sauce, engineering, programming, to beer making, being able to accurately reflect upon process steps, is the best way to improve process. (I also check ferm temps, at least twice a day), I have found this type of laborious note taking, though it may be un-needed, aids me in diagnosing issues and repeating brews in a consistent fashion. Perhaps after I get a lot more under my belt, such things will be less extensive, but for the time it takes to jot a couple things down, and my meticulous nature, I doubt it.

I live in AZ and my house is very rarely colder than 75F. I fermented my first batch at ambient temps before finding this awesome sight and it was about 2 months after bottling before the off flavors faded to a point of semi-drinkability but I had punished myself by drinking it all by then. Since then, I have controlled my temps and the beer turns out great. I keep my fermenter in a rubbermaid bucket half full of water and change out a frozen 2 liter bottle twice daily and am able to keep my fermenter temps in the low 60s, even when my house is closer to 80. It's worth it!

My first brew was last August, "West Coast Blonde Ale" from Home Brew Heaven, turned out great, and I was hooked!
2nd was another wheat beer kit, and I added what I thought was sterile brackberry juice, the result was undrinkable, terrible aftertaste, had to throw it away
The 3rd was a brown Porter kit that was on sale at the LHBS, with 4 specialty grains, and 3 different hops, I was a bit nervous about that kit, but followed directions, and it turned out great!
Tried a Hefeweizen, had a off aftertaste, might have been because I started the secondary siphon by mouth (I don't do that anymore).
Tried another Pale Ale kit with so so, but drinkable results.
So, so far I'm at about 50% happy results, when I attain 90% I'll give All Grain a try
Just started another Porter yesterday, and I'm going to order another primary fermenter, aeration pump, and more bottle caps!

I think my 8th batch was my first 'home run' if you want to call it that -- basically a beer that could compete vs the very good craft brews out there and will stay in my rotation until I brew something better. It was a partial mash IPA kit that I did a little tweaking on. SWMBO hates IPA's but I'd come home and she'd be pouring her own pints of it and she even got a little pissy when we kicked the keg. "Well why don't you have another ready to go?" LOL! Those 8% beers can get her all riled up

Start with sanitation -- if you are getting some similar off flavors, there is a possibility you have some bugs somewhere. My first three batches had the same off flavor flaw but it hasn't come back since I did a bleach cleaning. I have no way to prove it but I believe a Star San resistant bug was somewhere in my setup.

Then to water -- figure out if you have chlorine or chloramine. If you have chloramine you need to use something to get rid of it since it won't boil off like chlorine will. If your pH is on the high side, look into gypsum additions. I condition my water the day before and let it sit for 24 hours just so it can rest and the chloramines evaporate.

Then to temps -- my first few batches were all fermented on the hot side (75°+) since it was summer and the home A/C sucks. My winter batches were clearly better since they were fermenting 68°-72°. Their yeast profiles were just cleaner all round. I bought a cheap 4.2 cu. ft. mini-fridge off of Craigslist for $80 -- it can fit a 6 gallon fermenter currently but I'm expanding it to hold 4+ for the upcoming summer. If you only brew 1 beer every week or so, it'll be the best sub-$100 piece of equipment you own without modification and you won't have to deal with ice.

Like dbhokie said -- record keeping is incredibly important. If I was lazy with record keeping, I wouldn't know how to recreate my 'home runs' and more importantly, I wouldn't have data to help me find out where my problem areas are. Record everything you can: dates, times, temperatures, process changes, etc.

I'd also stick to kits until you get your process down. I'd even go back to just extract kits until your confidence and beer quality improves. Custom recipe creation is an art which is probably out of the scope of most new homebrewers. You can't pick random malts, hops, & yeasts and expect 'great beers'. Start with the proven recipes, get them tasty, and then move into tweaking and creating your own.

And to the OP -- do you have a hydrometer? It's a must have tool for beginners IMO.

themack22 said:

As far as cheating on the group and doing one solo, I've been thinking about it a lot and I have no qualms with doing that. I have all the equipment, sans carboys. Might need to grab another one.

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Or grab a fermenting bucket if you don't want another carboy. THey are usually cheaper.

themack22 said:

The hot temps thing is bothering me. Do I really want to spend a week keeping it in an ice bath? I guess if I want good beer I need to.

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Trust me, once you brew a delicious batch of beer and really catch the bug, you'll be excited to get home each afternoon and go make sure the beer is still at the right temp. You can smell the airlock while you're at it. Yummmmmmmm

My first brew was awesome, I set a carboard box over the carboy and had a floor ac vent in with it too. It was fine in January, but I froze. Since then I've used the rubbermaid swap cooler.

Proper yeast pitching, ferment temps and good sanitation while produce good beer

I have brewed 8 or nine batches and weirdly enough, the first batch I brewed was a Mr Beer West Coast Ale and it has been the best thus far. The second best was also a Mr Beer brew called American Devil (I think) IPA. I found it to be excellent and exciting. The third best was also a Mr Beer kit stout which reminded me of the dark porter we get down in Fredricksburg at their brewery. I had a 5 gal batch of Coopers real Ale that got really good once it had some age on it and the most recent 5gal batch is the Coopers IPA and it is tasty but a little sweet for me. I don't think I got to the full five gal volume though. It would appear that these things need to sit for a good three weeks or so at room temp after bottling and then in the frig for a week or two before they start getting to where they need to be.

The only off flavors I have encountered was a banana odor in the Coopers Real Ale which disappeared after an extra week of aging. It got really good and is gone now.

I have started doing more of a boil and am looking forward to seeing if this improves the flavors. I will also make very sure I am up to the full volume recommended in all subsequent brews as well.

I'd say give it some time and keep experimenting.

Also Mead is fun and I'm looking forward to trying some of the ones I've done. The commercial ones are very tasty. Much more enjoyable than wine. Sorry wine snobs.

I also did a cider which is getting more like the ones I have had in the pubs too.

I think more than anything, the road to improvement is patience and letting them get enough aging. Difficult at best. If anxious, go by something you like and brew another batch. Build up your inventory!

The only beer I've brewed that I didn't like was the first one, which was the result of following Mr. Beer instructions. Since then, it's been all good stuff, and other than the beer I currently have fermenting, I've only brewed with Mr. Beer to this point.

My favorite was probably a blackberry ale, Very subtle blackberry flavor, but it was dark and still refreshing. Also enjoyed a beer I made with bakers chocolate, which was really good after aging a few months.

I have not seen a single post on the value of using campden in your wort. I am a
total noob with like half a dozen batches under my belt, all have been drinkable if
not good, and I know my not so good brews have been due to unwise ingredient
choices, and not sanitation processes. If you use campden, you do at least two
things: first you treat your water for any chlorine, chloramine or bacteria. Also
you protect your wort from invasive infections that may result during fermentation.
I also go farther by using it as a samitizer for buckets, bottles, utensils, etc.
Two tablets in a 5 gallon batch is all you need to protect your wort, and one tab
per gallon in a sanitizing solution.

So far Ive brewed two extracts and 3 all grain batches. The last AG batch is still in the fermenter (I'm kind of scared to bottle it), but the first 4 beers have basically sucked. I too am pretty discouraged about the whole thing. I feel like I am very well read about the processes, and each time I am confident the beer will turn out good but it still sucks. And then I research more and find something that I think may fix the problem. So now I am contemplating another beer (a cheap easy one) to see if I have finally fixed my process.

mychalg9 said:

So far Ive brewed two extracts and 3 all grain batches. The last AG batch is still in the fermenter (I'm kind of scared to bottle it), but the first 4 beers have basically sucked. I too am pretty discouraged about the whole thing. I feel like I am very well read about the processes, and each time I am confident the beer will turn out good but it still sucks. And then I research more and find something that I think may fix the problem. So now I am contemplating another beer (a cheap easy one) to see if I have finally fixed my process.

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For a cheap, easy all grain brew I suggest a SMaSH (single malt, single hop). Use store bought filtered water (not R/O) and a clean yeast like US-05 and ferment between 60-65f. Simple recipes usually make better beers.

Yeah Ive done a SMASH with Cascade and Vienna or MO and it turned out crappy. I came to the conclusion that my boils are not hard enough so I have a turkey fryer that I am waiting to try out on my next brew, which will probably be another 2.5 gal SMASH recipe

themack22 said:

I want to quote everyone, but it's just too much. Thanks for all the kind words and encouragement.

As far as cheating on the group and doing one solo, I've been thinking about it a lot and I have no qualms with doing that. I have all the equipment, sans carboys. Might need to grab another one.

The hot temps thing is bothering me. Do I really want to spend a week keeping it in an ice bath? I guess if I want good beer I need to.

Click to expand...

Without a doubt, the two most important things to brewing good beer are temperature control during the fermentation process and appropriate yeast pitching rates. Proper sanitation is a given - addressing those two things will make the biggest difference in the product of your brew days.

OClairBrew said:

For a cheap, easy all grain brew I suggest a SMaSH (single malt, single hop). Use store bought filtered water (not R/O) and a clean yeast like US-05 and ferment between 60-65f. Simple recipes usually make better beers.

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+1000 and they are very very good and complex

When I lived in Seattle, I was fortunate to have very good LHBS with some partial grain recipes. From the very start, mine have ranged from good to great (for my palette and my friends comments...who knows whether they're really competitive.) The worst beer I made was from a kit.

Most of my variability has come from variable hops acidity--I only recently started to track and adjust my hops for those variations.

I read the whole thread and couldn't tell whether you were kegging or bottling. I started at kegging. IMO, much of what can go wrong happens in the bottle. Kegging eliminates this variable. Dry hopping in the keg is easy and effective too.

I am a bit more cavalier than many about "sanitization." Yes, I wash the heck out of my gear, and run a very tidy kitchen. If you know any doctors, especially any infectious disease folks, they'll tell you that modest soap with plenty of clean running water is what creates sanitary conditions. Real breweries resort to chemicals because they are doing clean-in-place with their pipes, kettles, etc. that they can't wash as easily as we can wash our small fermenter buckets.

Now that I live in the south, I have had to adapt a temperature controlled fermentation solution. I had an old under-counter wine cooler and rigged the Johnson Controls temperature controller. So far, so good.

Good luck.

My second all grain batch was a Vienna/Northern Brewer smash and I was really happy with it. The first batch I really was thrilled with, especially since it was my own recipe, was my Breakfast stout which was my 8th batch overall and my 5th all grain.

My Vienna/Northern Brewer SMaSH was my 1st AG and I am beyond thrilled with it. The two are a match made in beer heaven! It is incredible how something so simple with so few ingredients can be so complex in flavor.