First brew - couple of big mistakes (long)

A little background....I ordered all of my brewing equipment about 4-5 weeks ago and was ready to start brewing the weekend of 10/26. Well, my pregnant wife went into labor and delivered twin boys prematurely 10/23. So, needless to say I've been busy and haven't had time to brew. The boys are in the hospital special care unit, so while they aren't home yet, we spend 3-4 hours visiting / traveling to/from hospital each day. Boys are doing well, time to get some beer going as SWIMBO is asking when she can start having a few beers Anyways...

Anxious to get something started, I set aside this past Sunday to brew my first batch of beer, a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone from Midwest Supplies. Here is a summary of what went well, what I think went wrong, and some observations.

First, I did not observe Rule #1 which states I should relax and leave myself plenty of time to complete the job. I was not relaxed, and was trying to complete the task in a set amount of time due to reasons mentioned above.

Second, I overly observed Ruled #2 which states to have a beer while brewing. I probably had a few too many during the process which led to making some mistakes.

The day starts off by racking a carboy of 4-week old Apfelwein to a secondary in order to clear space for the Pale Ale. I didn't have my kegs prepared yet, so hence the move to a Secondary. Well, I decided to pull off a pint in the process to get things started. Damn good stuff! Will be better chilled and carbed, but it is good already.

So I set the specialty grains in 2 gallons of water and fired up my burner in the garage. Got the temp to 160 and steeped for 30 minutes. Here's where things get hairy....I added 4.5 gallons of cold water to the pot and set to bring it to a boil. For some reason, I decided to add the LME at around 105 degrees, not after a boil. I had trouble getting the pot to boil, but it eventually started bubbling after 2 hours. Note, the pot was covered during the entire 2 hours

So the pot finally boils after I consume several more beers, I set my timer for 60 minutes, add the first hop addition...cover and so on. Add the second hops with 2 minutes to go, fire up the chiller, rack the beer to a primary. Pitch the rehydrated dry Munton's yeast and watch Sunday night football.

Monday morning, no airlock activity. Same continues for 36 hours until I decide to pitch another packet of yeast, this time Cooper's Ale because that's all I had on hand.

Fast forward to this morning, and I finally have major activity taking place. I attached a blowoff hose instead of an airlock because I'm pretty tight in the 6 gallon carboy, and it's bubbling quite well and there is a nice amount of kreusen.

So I have a couple of questions for anyone suffering through this long post:
How bad is this going to taste? I know I created a great habitat for DMS to fester, but did adding the LME early / covering pre-boil add to that? Or is DMS solely released at boiling temps? I understand now (and I did then too) that I shouldn't cover the pot, nor should I add the extract until the pot boils. I covered the pot because I was having such a hard time maintaining my temps.

On a side note, I fired up the burner with 7 gallons of cold water the next day and got it boiling in 15 minutes. So I either didn't have adaquete oxygen for the fire in the garage, or the LME severely impacted the time to reach boil. I'm leaning towards Oxygen, but thoughts on this would be appreciated as well.

Sorry for the long post, thanks for the future advice. I guess the good news is that I can't wait to brew my second batch and fix all of the mistakes I made during the first. Hopefully the Pale Ale is drinkable to some degree, but if not it was certainly a learning experience.

Dam inconsiderate SWIMBO's interfering with brewday...
Congrats though can't help you with the boil...

There's nothing wrong with adding malt extract pre-boil, the reason people usually wait for the boil is that it dissolves more readily so you're less likely to get scorching on the bottom. But since you were doing a full boil, you wouldn't have as much trouble with that anyway. You may have had some DMS buildup by keeping it covered before boiling, but DMS would be boiling off during the whole time it was boiling uncovered so it should not be a problem.

malt extract should not have too much of an effect on how long it takes to boil, certainly not as significant as 2 hours vs. 15 minutes, so I would guess it was other factors. Did you at least manage to maintain a good, solid, rolling boil with your wort even though it took a long time to boil?

Funkenjaeger said:

...You may have had some DMS buildup by keeping it covered before boiling, but DMS would be boiling off during the whole time it was boiling uncovered so it should not be a problem.

.... Did you at least manage to maintain a good, solid, rolling boil with your wort even though it took a long time to boil?

Click to expand...

I covered during the boil too, so wouldn't the built-up "pre-boil" DMS be a factor still? I'm just hoping that this beer doesn't taste like garbage.

I was able to maintain a good rolling boil, it just took forever to get there. I think it was lack of Oxygen or something to do with air flow. I'm not worried about that happening again, as I'm moving the cooker outdoors in future cooks for various reasons.

DMS is generally a non-issue with extract. As per the interviews I've heard with the extract manufacturers, most of the DMS precursors are removed through the manufacturing process.

Ultimately, you're going to want either the ability to bring all that wort to a boil faster (read: propane), or do smaller, 2.5-3.0 gallon boils (which is what most extract brewers do anyway).

Good luck with the twins! That's what really matters, anyway...

Thanks, that is great info. So it sounds like the batch might have a chance.

I'll post some updates as time goes on.

Congrats to you and your wife on the arrival of your wee ones!

Sounds like this was your first brew day? I can tell you that even though I read over the instructions for days in advance, I was anything but relaxed during my first brewing. I was sweating bullets the whole time and made a couple of minor mistakes, including a boil-over...but I got through it and the beer turned out fine. My following brew days were all much more relaxed. Once you do something like this, it's never that scary or mysterious again, you know?