Tasting to determine success of fermentation

Hi, I brewed my first homemade beer about a week ago. Being a newbie to the brewing process and excited I forgot to take an initial hydrometer reading. I also used lager yeast not knowing that it probably wasn't a good choice for my first brew. I pitched the yeast at ~90 degrees F (I know way to high of a temperature for beer yeast let alone lager yeast) but after a few days of worrying about my yeast I could definitely smell a yeasty smell and a thin layer of bubbles were on top so I'm assuming the fermentation picked up but is not very vigorous because of the heat shock. In addition does anyone know how accurate it would be to taste the beer for non fermented sugars after a few weeks to determine if fermentation is complete since I cant refer to an initial hydrometer reading? Thanks for any help in advance. -William

If you give your recipe, we can estimate what the final gravity would be, assuming you hit the original gravity ok.

This is my recipe, my mash was 153 for 60 min in 2 gallons water, on average do you know how much to take off the final gravity for inefficiencies?
5lb American Two-row
1lb Bonlander Munich
1lb Crystal 20L
1lb Honey Malt
.25lb Flaked wheat
Thankyou

sorry i forgot>> 3 gallons final volume

just measured the sg it's 1.006,

Uhhh I've never done all-grain so hopefully someone else will chime in.

Beer Alchemy is showing an O.G. of 1.075 for a 3 gal batch with 75% efficiency...

If you are at 1.006, that would be 92% attenuation... which probably means you didn't hit your O.G. target, or you have some yeast on steroids.

Maybe an AG brewer can step in here...

1.006 means it is done

As stated, you probably didn't hit an original gravity of 1.075, as the attenuation would be too high...the numbers don't add up.

Which yeast did you use? You can use it's attenuation estimates to get an idea of your OG.

More importantly, how far along are you in the process? I would not keg, rack or bottle that until it has sit well over a week.

Ya, I would imagine that the efficiency for all grain will be lower than extract. I used San Fransico Lager yeast, regardless I'll wait until the readings are constant before bottling since thats the best I can do, do you think 2 days of constant SG is good enough or longer?

Efficiency with extract is not an issue...it's all grain extract sugars...the work regarding efficiency has already been done. With a simple all-grain, you're looking at probably 60-75% efficiency with a decent batch. I could help you with increasing your efficiency, if you'd like.

I love that yeast...are you making a steam beer?

But I'd really like to know how long it has been sitting. I don't advise people to rack too quickly, even if the beer is done. Those yeast need time to clean up after themselves so it's good to let it sit on top of the cake.

I suppose it would be a steam beer by definition although I didn't know that was a style before I started, I picked out the yeast because it seemed like the most robust yeast and that would be good since I figured I'd make some mistakes. The beer has been in the fermenter for about a week, I tasted some that I took out for the SG reading yesterday and it definitely tasted like beer although it tasted kind of light, hopefully some extra time will have it tasting better.

Sorry, I forgot to calculate this for you. According to the top range of the yeast, you're starting gravity would be 1.030 or lower. It could possibly attenuate out more than the suggested range, but definitely no more than 1.040. You're efficiency is in the 30% range. You want at least 60%. How did you do your mash?

It's going to taste light no matter what. If you want to spice it up, throw some dry hops in the secondary or in the keg...I'm sure it'll make an awesome small beer.

Oh well, live and learn, I used a 7 gallon cylindrical cooler, I did the mash at 153 for 60 min, do you suppose that since I used 2 gallons of water for ~8 lbs grain and added the rest of the water later there should have been more water in the mash to maybe help extract more sugars??

I am having trouble following you. Did you just mash with 2 gallons, then added some water during the boil to get to 3 gallons? If so, you needed a sparge to extract more sugar from the grain. If you did sparge, how much?

Except 3 gallons in kind of an odd sized batch, so I'm wondering if you don't mean you added 3 gallons to make 5 gallons total...

I meant that my batch was 3 gallons total. I did add water to the boil. I decided not to sparge because I thought it wouldn't make a huge difference in extraction. Would not sparging make that much of a difference?

Yes. That's definitely what did it. You needed a larger mash volume and you need to sparge (rinse) your grains.

You want to mash at around 1.5 quarts per pound of grain (generaly 1.25-2), so that would put you closer to 3 gallons of water for your mash. Then sparge with an additional 3-4 gallons (if possible, of course...I don't know what your capacity is.)

You may wish to check out the Partial Mash and Stovetop All-grain threads in my sig...it has a fairly good run-down of these processes. Let me know if you have any questions!

Short answer is Yes, it can.

Part of the answer is going to depend on how much first running you actually collected. If you had a large dead volume, then your efficiency will be very low. 2 gallons for 8 lb is only mashing at 1 qt/pound, which is low too. More common is to use 1.25 qt/lb, which would have meant using 2.5 gallons.

Someone (Bobby_M?) has a table showing how sparging affects efficiency. Unless you specifically plan to do a no-sparge (which means using a bunch-o-grain), then you really need to do at least one. A second sparge doesn't get you much extra.

You don't need an OG to determine if fermentation is complete. When the gravity stops decreasing, it's done. A stable reading over the course of at least 3 days is usually a good indication.