1st batch; relaxed, but starting to worry

I am hoping I just need to be told to not worry. 1st brew jitters; tried to absorb everything on the site, but there is soooo much good stuff.

LHBS recipe includes amber dry malt extract, crystal, vienna & smoked malts, hallertauer & tettnanger hop pellets, lager yeast.

Boiled partially covered (strike 1) in oxidized aluminum kettle. Had trouble keeping it boiling hard (will make a nice jacket for the kettle before the next batch). Poured directly into primary, no sparging. Pitched yeast at 76 deg. 1.067 corrected SG. Closed fermentation, spent the first 3 days in the kitchen at 60-70 degrees; out of direct sunlight, but still exposed to light. Then to dark room at ~55 degrees. Good fermentation, but I may have stopped too soon; 1 week total then to secondary at 1.021.

Just checked it @ 12 days; still at 1.021 with no movement through the air lock. Smells good, but bad taste - maybe a little astringent?

Do I just not worry, give it 2 weeks in the secondary and go to bottle and see how it works out?

RDWHAHB, or you could just relax and have a home brew. Either way your beer will be kick ass because you brewed it. let that brew rest for a couple more weeks

Looks good. Partially covered is OK. I do that because otherwise I'll get drip backs from the over the oven fan. As long as steam can excape it's OK . . not perfect but we do what we can.

1.020 is good depending on the yeast. that is about 67% attenuation and I presume you used a bunch of extract so it's not out of the norm.

The taste at this point is 100% useless. You only get a HINT of the final outcome at bottling. If it taste good then it will taste great later. If it does not make you gag it will be fine.

tried to absorb everything on the site, but there is soooo much good stuff.

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When I started brewing I wanted to know EVERYTHING NOW. I felt I did pretty well but even now I'm learning things from batch to batch on technique, flavors, and so forth.

Welcome to the brew obsession.

It should be ok, but 55 degrees is pretty cool for ale yeast to finish up. If you have anyplace a little warmer, like 68 degrees or so, you could leave it there to see if it'll drop a few more points. At 1.021, it's a little high.

I don't understand what you meant by "Poured directly into primary, no sparging" but otherwise the technique seems ok!

Try not to worry- nothing you can do about it now anyway. Well, except for getting it a bit warmer for a week or so. But I can't think of anything else!

YooperBrew said:

It should be ok, but 55 degrees is pretty cool for ale yeast to finish up. If you have anyplace a little warmer, like 68 degrees or so, you could leave it there to see if it'll drop a few more points. At 1.021, it's a little high.

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The OP said he was using lager yeast from the LHBS

Oh, sorry- I missed that. I just noticed the temperatures and assumed ale yeast. Lager yeast strains really hate those high temperatures, so I didn't realize. Pitched at 76 degrees and then keep at 70 or so is even a bit warm for most ale yeast.

I don't know what to tell you. Just wait for it to finish, I guess. The bad taste is probably from the lager yeast fermenting 15-20 degrees too hot.

You could try to swirl the bucket gently to kick up the yeast, and warm it up to the low to mid 60's. You might drop a couple more points on your SG. What is your target FG? You're already at 6.2% ABV.

First off, thank you everyone for all the input.

Estimated ending gravity on the kit is 1.012-1.01. I didn't get much sediment into the secondary so not sure hom much I can kit it up. No concerns about leaving it in the secondary except with no activity I am worried about the CO2 that is hopefully still on top of the beer. Had a few small round "things" (bubbles? colonies?) on the top in the seconday, but I am going to relax, not worry, and have a craft brew; and put it in the bottle in another week (3 weeks post boil).

Thanks again!!

Don't worry, just relax. I would say have a homebrew, but since its your first batch you probably don't have any ready. Have a quality microbrew instead. I was pretty sure I screwed up my first batch but it turned out OK.

Learn more for the next one! - I thought my first beer was awesome.... until I tried my second one a few days ago!!! Wow! My first one was awesome because I brewed it. My second one (been sitting in bottles for 5 weeks - yes, somehow I was able to keep my hands off of it!) is better than Sam Adams (I know, I know, Sam Adams isn't the best beer out there, but it's a start!) --- I used to think that I'd give away a lot of my beer, if only to get one other person started into homebrewing... I'm kinda thinking I'm going to hoard this one for myself!