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slim0ner

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Jan 22, 2013
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Location
New York City
kit type: Oktoberfest (purchased from true brew)
start date: 1/19/2013
beginning gravity: 1.040 (excactly as stated on the kit)
foamed for a day out of the carboy. I used a blow off for a day and put on a stopper after it stopped foaming. next batch I will buy a 6 gallon bucket. carboy is to heavy and almost impossible to pour your Wort into. I had to pour into a bottling bucket then use that to pour into the carboy Waste of time.

Anyone have any comments of suggestions please share it has been about 60 hours and it looks like it stopped bubbling (bubbles every 66 seconds). going to let it settle and bottle exactly 1 week from day 1.

I am worried due to volcano all my yeast leaked out and my beer wont be strong how to I ensure I will have a good 4.5% alcohol beer?

brew.jpg
 
Yep, you need at least a 6.5 gallon bucket for primary fermentation. I would wait at least 2 full weeks, if not 3, until you bottle. No sense in rushing things, fermentation generally takes more than 1 week so you'll end up with a lot of bottle bombs if you bottle so quickly.

P.S.: You have the start date listed as 1/26, which is 5 days from now?
 
As a rule of thumb, three weeks in the bottle at room temperature for carbonation, then refrigerate for at least 24 hours before it's ready. That said, some beers benefit from cold conditioning for weeks or even months, at the same time it is not illegal to give in your temptation and put one in the fridge after a week. Odds are it will be flat, but you'll get an idea if how your beer develops over time.
 
You do not want to rush this beer. It takes some time to mature, so if you drink it too early, it isn't going to be ready.

This one needs at least 4-6 weeks.

Ideally, follow the 2-2-2 rule for average gravity ales:

2 weeks in primary to ferment
2 weeks in bottles to carb/condition
2 weeks in the fridge at serving temps

2 weeks in primary to ferment most wort realistically fully ferments in 3-5 days. HOWEVER, once the yeast are done fermenting, they go back and start to eat their own byproducts, which takes a few more days and leads to a cleaner, tastier beer.

2 weeks in bottles to carb/condition. Average gravity (4-6% ABV) beers ALWAYS take AT LEAST 2 weeks at about 70F to carbonate. The same ales will condition and get better. The 4-6 week total time period will produce a beer that's about 90% conditioned, but realistically, most average gravity beers will PEAK in more like 3-4 months after brew day, so the longer you can condition, the better, up to about 3-4 months.

2 weeks in the fridge at serving temps. First off, the carbonation you produced in the carb/condition phase is mostly in the headspace of the bottle at 70F, and won't even start to dissolve into the beer until you have it down to serving temps. At 40F, it takes about 48 hours for the CO2 to dissolve into the beer.

Also, a small amount of residual proteins, including yeast, are present in the beer prior to chilling. Chilling to serving temps makes these proteins visable to the eye, clouding your beer. This is called chill haze. It takes about 7-10 days at serving temps for the chill haze proteins to settle to the bottom of the bottle. It also takes about 2 weeks at serving temps for the sediment at the bottom of each bottle (yeast and other proteins) to harden into a solid sediment ring. Opening a bottle any earlier than the 2 week point will likely swirl some of the sediment back into suspension when the CO2 breaks the surface tension of the beer. Doesn't really hurt the taste of the beer, just bad for clarity.

So that's about the MINIMUMS for most styles. There are exceptions. Anything with 50%+ wheat malt in the grist is best drank young, and is usually more like a 1-1-1 process. Anything with a lager yeast or anything with high ABV and all of the processes above take exponentially longer, up to a year for some barleywines and belgian trippels/quads. Lower ABV under 4%, and the processes above all take less time.

Anyway, that's some good guidelines. PATIENCE is a very essential ingredient in beer. Rush your Oktoberfest through, and you are simply going to have inferior beer. Drinkable, but inferior to what it will be in 6-8 weeks.

Learn patience on this first beer and practise patience on all of your beers in the future, and you'll be a much better brewer for it.

Good luck!
 
As a rule of thumb, three weeks in the bottle at room temperature for carbonation, then refrigerate for at least 24 hours before it's ready. That said, some beers benefit from cold conditioning for weeks or even months, at the same time it is not illegal to give in your temptation and put one in the fridge after a week. Odds are it will be flat, but you'll get an idea if how your beer develops over time.

I'm am trying to prevent bottle rockets. Someone posted earlier that keep in fermenter for 2-3 weeks. So do I keep it in fermenter for 2 weeks then bottle and keep in room temp for another 3 weeks?
 
You do not want to rush this beer. It takes some time to mature, so if you drink it too early, it isn't going to be ready.

This one needs at least 4-6 weeks.

Ideally, follow the 2-2-2 rule for average gravity ales:

2 weeks in primary to ferment
2 weeks in bottles to carb/condition
2 weeks in the fridge at serving temps

2 weeks in primary to ferment most wort realistically fully ferments in 3-5 days. HOWEVER, once the yeast are done fermenting, they go back and start to eat their own byproducts, which takes a few more days and leads to a cleaner, tastier beer.

2 weeks in bottles to carb/condition. Average gravity (4-6% ABV) beers ALWAYS take AT LEAST 2 weeks at about 70F to carbonate. The same ales will condition and get better. The 4-6 week total time period will produce a beer that's about 90% conditioned, but realistically, most average gravity beers will PEAK in more like 3-4 months after brew day, so the longer you can condition, the better, up to about 3-4 months.

2 weeks in the fridge at serving temps. First off, the carbonation you produced in the carb/condition phase is mostly in the headspace of the bottle at 70F, and won't even start to dissolve into the beer until you have it down to serving temps. At 40F, it takes about 48 hours for the CO2 to dissolve into the beer.

Also, a small amount of residual proteins, including yeast, are present in the beer prior to chilling. Chilling to serving temps makes these proteins visable to the eye, clouding your beer. This is called chill haze. It takes about 7-10 days at serving temps for the chill haze proteins to settle to the bottom of the bottle. It also takes about 2 weeks at serving temps for the sediment at the bottom of each bottle (yeast and other proteins) to harden into a solid sediment ring. Opening a bottle any earlier than the 2 week point will likely swirl some of the sediment back into suspension when the CO2 breaks the surface tension of the beer. Doesn't really hurt the taste of the beer, just bad for clarity.

So that's about the MINIMUMS for most styles. There are exceptions. Anything with 50%+ wheat malt in the grist is best drank young, and is usually more like a 1-1-1 process. Anything with a lager yeast or anything with high ABV and all of the processes above take exponentially longer, up to a year for some barleywines and belgian trippels/quads. Lower ABV under 4%, and the processes above all take less time.

Anyway, that's some good guidelines. PATIENCE is a very essential ingredient in beer. Rush your Oktoberfest through, and you are simply going to have inferior beer. Drinkable, but inferior to what it will be in 6-8 weeks.

Learn patience on this first beer and practise patience on all of your beers in the future, and you'll be a much better brewer for it.

Good luck!

you have answered everything I needed an answer to. Thank You for your time
 
TopherM has it all. Well done!
Having agreed, however, the truebrew Oktoberfest was my 1st kit, over a year ago. I bottled it after 1 week, and cracked my 1st bottle a week later. Newbie mistake, but it still was great. After all, IMADE IT! It did get better as I left it longer to bottle condition.
A couple months later I did the kit again, with lager yeast this time. Primary for 2.5 weeks, secondary lagering for a month, bottle condition for 3 weeks. Much better!
Patience is a virtue, especially with Homebrew.
 
kit type: Oktoberfest (purchased from true brew)

I am worried due to volcano all my yeast leaked out and my beer wont be strong how to I ensure I will have a good 4.5% alcohol beer?

It is very unlikely that you will have blown out all the yeast. If a lot of the yeast exits, the remainder will just make more of itself and make alcohol until it runs out of food. (malt sugars).

you should have a hydrometer to check your final gravity (your post indicates you did). No matter the bubbling or lack of it, no matter the blow off/foam or lack of it, the only way to really tell if the beer is about done, is to take a gravity measure of it. Given your OG and typical FG's I expect your instructions are for a 1.010. See if it is there in 2 weeks.

Also bottle bombs primarily happen from to much CO2, which occurs from to much sugar in the bottle at the time of bottling.
 
TopherM has it all. Well done!
Having agreed, however, the truebrew Oktoberfest was my 1st kit, over a year ago. I bottled it after 1 week, and cracked my 1st bottle a week later. Newbie mistake, but it still was great. After all, IMADE IT! It did get better as I left it longer to bottle condition.
A couple months later I did the kit again, with lager yeast this time. Primary for 2.5 weeks, secondary lagering for a month, bottle condition for 3 weeks. Much better!
Patience is a virtue, especially with Homebrew.

can you explain to me what secondary lagering is?
 
Basically just transferring the beer to a secondary, then cold conditioning it at 30-34F to lager the beer to promote clarity and give the beer the crisp aftertaste associated with the style. All beers can benefit from this process, but it's pretty much required for beer made with lager yeast if you want to nail the style.
 
can you explain to me what secondary lagering is?

You probably know the difference between ale yeast and lager yeast. When I did the kit with the lager yeast I let it sit in primary longer(at 45-50*), because they are slower to finish. Then racked it to a secondary and let it sit in my garage between 35-40* for a month.
 
can you explain to me what secondary lagering is?

You probably know the difference between ale yeast and lager yeast. When I did the kit with the lager yeast I let it sit in primary longer(at 45-50*), because they are slower to finish. Then racked it to a secondary and let it sit in my garage between 35-40* for a month.
By the way, if you haven't picked up a copy of John Palmer's "How to Brew", it's a definite buy. Covers everything. There is also an online version, but I like the hardcopy. It's my 'go-to' reference.
 
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