I added table sugar to the secondary.

This is my second batch of beer. I was really excited because instead of buying a boxed kit I decided to get a recipe and buy all the ingredients separately. So I picked a recipe from John Palmer's Book "How To Brew," Port-O-Palmer.

3.3lbs pale LME in boil
3.3lbs pale LME at knockout
0.5lbs crystal 60L
0.5lbs chocolate malt
0.25lbs black patent

1/2oz Horizon (12%) 60min
3/4oz Willamette (5%) 40min
1/2oz Willamette (5%) 20min

White Labs WLP013 London Ale Yeast

Brewing went well. I did mess up and add all the extract at once. Also, the cans of LME I added were 4lbs, Alexander's Pale Malt extract. So that's 8lbs of LME instead of 6.6lbs. The guy helping me acted like that wasn't a problem and I went ahead and added all of both cans. I cooled the wort in an ice bath (made my own IC after this brew).

I didn't take an OG reading, but after 10 days I took a reading and it was at 1.025. So I relaxed and had a microbrew. At 15 days it was at 1.025, so I started to get a little more concerned.

I probably should have asked for advice first, but I wanted to get another batch going, so...

Before racking to the secondary I poured table sugar into a liquid measuring cup up to the 16oz level, added it to 2quarts of water and boiled, then cooled and added to the secondary before racking the beer from the primary.

Now that it's really too late I wonder if it's going to be okay. My specific questions are:

--How long should I wait before bottling? Just until fermentation stops (as per hydro readings) or should I wait longer? I'm worried that I might have increased my chances of bottle bombs.

--Will the amount of sugar I added have a negative affect on the beer? When tasting my samples they seemed very sweet. My wife agreed. I thought that the sugar would dry it out a bit and get the FG a little lower, but I'm worried that the sugar combined with the extra water (it was about 0.5gal short of 5gal. in the primary) will go too far and it'll end up on the thin and dry side.

--Is there anything wrong with starting a second fermentation in the secondary?

Any help or suggestions to drink and relax are welcome.

I don't see any timelines, how long was it in primary and how long has it been in secondary? My impulse is that you should RDWHAHB or RDWHACB.

Keep on brewing my friends

Adding all the extract at the start of the boil is one standard way of brewing. Adding it late changes the colour (makes it a bit more authentic) and also will make the beer more bitter (boiling the hops with a higher water content for longer increases bitterness extraction). The extra bitterness could be good though, as your definitely added some sweetness with the extra malt.

Your gravity seems a touch high, but attenuation on that strain is 67-75% per White Labs and with that much extract and sugar your starting gravity could have easily been up in the 1.075-80 range, which would mean that the FG will be in that 1.020 range.

(I used Hopville's Beer Calculus for this, useful tool:

http://beercalculus.hopville.com/recipe)

Edit: I also just saw that you only have 4.5 gallons, this means your SG was even higher than that, and that you probably were at your final gravity before adding the sugar. Remember, the less water you add the higher the SG is, so if you were under by a 1/2 gallon, the final beer was going to end up that much heavier as a result. Keep checking your hydro now that you've added sugar, but I wouldn't expect the gravity to drop significantly from that point.

COLObrewer said:

I don't see any timelines, how long was it in primary and how long has it been in secondary? My impulse is that you should RDWHAHB or RDWHACB.

Keep on brewing my friends

Click to expand...

It was in the primary for 16 days. My second gravity reading was 1.025 after 15 days in primary. It has now been in secondary for 3 days. I plan to leave it there for 2 weeks.

CortexBomb said:

Adding all the extract at the start of the boil is one standard way of brewing. Adding it late changes the colour (makes it a bit more authentic) and also will make the beer more bitter (boiling the hops with a higher water content for longer increases bitterness extraction). The extra bitterness could be good though, as your definitely added some sweetness with the extra malt.

Your gravity seems a touch high, but attenuation on that strain is 67-75% per White Labs and with that much extract and sugar your starting gravity could have easily been up in the 1.075-80 range, which would mean that the FG will be in that 1.020 range.

(I used Hopville's Beer Calculus for this, useful tool:

http://beercalculus.hopville.com/recipe)

Edit: I also just saw that you only have 4.5 gallons, this means your SG was even higher than that, and that you probably were at your final gravity before adding the sugar. Remember, the less water you add the higher the SG is, so if you were under by a 1/2 gallon, the final beer was going to end up that much heavier as a result. Keep checking your hydro now that you've added sugar, but I wouldn't expect the gravity to drop significantly from that point.

Click to expand...

Yeah, at this point I really wish I had taken an OG reading. I did add 2 quarts of water with the sugar, bringing it back up to 5gal.

I probably should have just relaxed a little more and let it go. That way I'd have a better idea if this is a recipe I want to use again.

Oh well, I'm sure it'll be drinkable, even if I'm the only one willing to drink it

I think on the balance, you are probably going to end up with a sweeter beer than you were expecting, but chalk it up to experience.

If the recipe called for using half of the extract at knock-out, it was doing that to keep a higher water content in the initial pot, which would mean that you would be getting more IBUs out of the hops. When you added all of it at the 60 minute mark, and then the extra malt on top of that, you decreased the bitterness extraction, which will make the beer sweeter. Adding more malt also increased the malty sweetness in and of itself.

In general, there is nothing wrong with adding all of the extract early, but if a recipe is specifically calling for late extract addition, you are going to have to tinker with the hops to get the bitterness right.

Also, be aware that scaling up the base malts (per the extract) means that you also want to scale up the specialty grains as well. You might not have as much of the specialty characteristics as you would ideally like because of the extra base malt.