Hello all, today I have made my first homemade beer batch. It is not my first fermented beverage, I have some traditional meads on the way, but it is my first beer and I have some doubts about it. I only had a few ingredients so I had no other choices for my first batch. Every container and piece of equipment I used was cleaned thoroughly and soaked in a solution of water and C-brite for at least 20 minutes, and then rinsed well with water and left to dry with room temperature air.
I used the following:
Batch size: 3 gallons
Fermentables:
1 can (4lbs) Mountmellick Light (syrup)
0.7 lbs Muntons LME (powder)
0.3 lbs dark, really good wildflower honey
1 oz white sugar
Hops:
1 oz Cascade hop pellets
Water:
Natural bottled water (up to 3 gallons)
Yeast:
1 pkg Fermentis Safale S-04
Process:
Heated water up to 185F and added the syrup, extract powder, honey and sugar, stirring well to dissolve and aerate. Bring to a boil and added 3/4 (0.75 oz) hop pellets. Boiled for 45 minutes and added the remaining hops, 1/4 (0.25 oz) for 15 minutes. Cooled wort, strained to primary fermenter (I am actually using 2 separate fermenters, about 1.5 gallons each), topped up with natural water and shook for a while to mix everything up. Measured the OG when the temperature was around 72ºF; my hydrometer reading of the bottled water was exactly 1.000 so I was a bit confused when I got an OG reading of the wort of 1.062, seems a little high in my opinion (again I'm really new to homebrewing!).
I used half the yeast package for a small starter, using only a cup of clean water at 72ºF and letting it sit for 20 minutes, stirring softly each 5 minutes. After this the starter was bubbling and creating quite a bit of foam. Added the starter and then the other half of the yeast package divided into each container. Put on sanitized stoppers and airlocks and filled them up with water and about 5 drops of sanitizing alcohol into each one. After 8 hours each airlock is bubbling nicely, about a bubble each 3 seconds or so. A 1 inch thick krausen has formed and the color is a darkish opaque brown (much like a milk chocolate bar). The temperatures this will be at will be about 70-73ºF.
Now the questions:
1. What do you think about the OG reading? Using an online beer recipe calculator and applying the amounts I used I get a reading of 1.048 which is quite far away from my actual reading.
2. Using the ingredients noted before, and considering the temperature range, which style would you say this beer would be? I have too much to learn about beers so please bear with me! I know I have to relax, don't worry and have a homebrew. But I would like to know my beer style. Do you guys think this is an Ale, and if so, in which style would it be?
3. The Mountmellick syrup is unhopped but I'm not sure about Muntons Light Malt extract, the bag does not say a thing about it. Is 1oz of Cascade too much hops for a 3 gallon batch?
4. Any suggestions about fermentation duration or racking schedule? Should I secondary or directly bottle and prime?
I will be tremendously thankful to anyone commenting about my little experiment. I will try to post some photos if I get ahold of a digital camera and share the progress. Thanks for reading and good homebrewing!
I used the following:
Batch size: 3 gallons
Fermentables:
1 can (4lbs) Mountmellick Light (syrup)
0.7 lbs Muntons LME (powder)
0.3 lbs dark, really good wildflower honey
1 oz white sugar
Hops:
1 oz Cascade hop pellets
Water:
Natural bottled water (up to 3 gallons)
Yeast:
1 pkg Fermentis Safale S-04
Process:
Heated water up to 185F and added the syrup, extract powder, honey and sugar, stirring well to dissolve and aerate. Bring to a boil and added 3/4 (0.75 oz) hop pellets. Boiled for 45 minutes and added the remaining hops, 1/4 (0.25 oz) for 15 minutes. Cooled wort, strained to primary fermenter (I am actually using 2 separate fermenters, about 1.5 gallons each), topped up with natural water and shook for a while to mix everything up. Measured the OG when the temperature was around 72ºF; my hydrometer reading of the bottled water was exactly 1.000 so I was a bit confused when I got an OG reading of the wort of 1.062, seems a little high in my opinion (again I'm really new to homebrewing!).
I used half the yeast package for a small starter, using only a cup of clean water at 72ºF and letting it sit for 20 minutes, stirring softly each 5 minutes. After this the starter was bubbling and creating quite a bit of foam. Added the starter and then the other half of the yeast package divided into each container. Put on sanitized stoppers and airlocks and filled them up with water and about 5 drops of sanitizing alcohol into each one. After 8 hours each airlock is bubbling nicely, about a bubble each 3 seconds or so. A 1 inch thick krausen has formed and the color is a darkish opaque brown (much like a milk chocolate bar). The temperatures this will be at will be about 70-73ºF.
Now the questions:
1. What do you think about the OG reading? Using an online beer recipe calculator and applying the amounts I used I get a reading of 1.048 which is quite far away from my actual reading.
2. Using the ingredients noted before, and considering the temperature range, which style would you say this beer would be? I have too much to learn about beers so please bear with me! I know I have to relax, don't worry and have a homebrew. But I would like to know my beer style. Do you guys think this is an Ale, and if so, in which style would it be?
3. The Mountmellick syrup is unhopped but I'm not sure about Muntons Light Malt extract, the bag does not say a thing about it. Is 1oz of Cascade too much hops for a 3 gallon batch?
4. Any suggestions about fermentation duration or racking schedule? Should I secondary or directly bottle and prime?
I will be tremendously thankful to anyone commenting about my little experiment. I will try to post some photos if I get ahold of a digital camera and share the progress. Thanks for reading and good homebrewing!
