A true bonehead brewing session. This should taste different.

So I wanted to brew a quick Rye (25%) special bitter around 1044. I went to my local brewery and weighed the grain/hops out and helped myself to some yeast. On the way home, I had the garbage bag full of grain over my back when somebody on the street pointed out that I had a trail of grain behind me, so I lost some grain to the pavement. After the brew was done, I took a gravity reading and it came out to 1075 (!!!). whoops. I weighed the grain in Kg instead of pounds. Only problem is I hopped this like a special bitter because I was too lazy to take a Boil gravity at the beginning of the boil. So now I am looking at a relatively high gravity ale (luckily there is hardly any cystal malts in it) with an IBU of around 22.

I figure this beer will almost be like a helles rye bock fermented with an english yeast strain. I just hope its not overly sweet. I mashed in at 150 so it shouldnt be too thick. Just thought I should share one of my most Boneheadish brew days ever with you guys. Here's hoping for a tasty beer. Cheers!

Hahaha..... units of measurement suck. At least you lost some of the grain on your walk. That should have at least made the OG a little closer to what you intended. Maybe it'll be the best beer ever.

Wow. A Kg is about 2.2lbs. Odd you didn't notice your grain volume was about twice what it normally is. Should be an interesting beer.

If it is still in fermentation and you wanted, you could boil a couple gallons of water with some hops, split the first batch into two fermentors and add equal amounts of the hop water to each and some more yeast to get the gravity down and the IBU's up. Or you could just wait and see how it turns out.

I know that a pound is equal to 2.2 kilograms from watching Miami Vice......

What was your recipe? It would be interesting to see if the beer is close to some BJCP category. Or, maybe we can just make up the class.

pnj said:

I know that a pound is equal to 2.2 kilograms from watching Miami Vice......

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1 lbs = 0.45 kg....

2.2 lbs = 1 kg

I have no idea what style that would fall into other than specialty beer, but that sounds interesting and I'd love to drink some just to see how it turns out. Sort of like a dubbel rye.

Rick500 said:

2.2 lbs = 1 kg

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well , the numbers were correct... it was like 20 years ago

You just made an Imperial Rye Special Bitter!

At least that is what you tell your friends.

You just go to your local brewery and get grain and yeast? You giving HJ's to the brewmaster or something?

And just how many beers did you have while at the brewery to mistake kg for lbs?

pnj said:

well , the numbers were correct... it was like 20 years ago

Click to expand...

And they havent even changed since then, amazing!!

(I'm kidding)

...Sounds like an under-attenuated ESB I have on tap. It's like a dessert beer - I can't drink more than half a pint at a time.

Why not just use this as an experiment in High Gravity brewing? Dillute the result of fermentation to the appropriate gravity. Adjusting the hop balance will be a problem, though. Maybe boil a small extract batch, heavily hop it, and use to krausen the main batch. So this could be practice at both krausening AND high gravity brewing. F'ed-up beers are the ones that really provide an opportunity for experimentation.

If it does come out too sweet, try what Zen_Brew suggested and make a simple hop tea, and bitter that bad boy back up