Wee Heavy - First Batch - Newbie Brewer

Hello Folks!

Sunday I brewed my first Batch, an all-grain Wee heavy.

I started looking into the subject since the beginning of the year and decided that Wee heavy would be a good Challenge.

Grain Bill:

6.6lb Munich malt type 2
6.6lb Pale Ale
2.2lb Crystal malt
2.2lb Vienna Malt
1lb Biscuit Malt
0.2lb special B Malt

for a 5.3gallon Batch.

Efficiency wasn't so great, got stuck at 1080 (estimated was 1112) and bumped it to 1102 with 1lb molasses.

pitched the whole thing at 77F with 2 packets of nottinhgam ale dry yeast.


it is now sitting in a 10gal bucket with a near the bottom and an airlock bubbling every 2min or so.

One caveat though: I'm in Brasil, in a place where temperature ranges from 65F(at night) and 95F. I placed my bucket in a cellar where average temp is around 77F.

And i have no control over temperature.


Isee people here saying I should not rack to secondary, taking 4 weeks in primary and such... but at my temperature range, won't there be autolysis?

Hope you can help me!

At that temp I would be worried about band aid flavors. Look into a "swamp cooler" as soon as you can.

ALL MUST SALUTE THE NOOB. =(


I didnt cool the wort before reading the refractometer after boiling. My friend just told me his refractometer does not compensate for temperature. Assuming it was at 70C when I measured it (blowed it like hot food so it wouldnt break the thing), I did the math here.

it measured 28Brix at the time. Compensating temperature to 20C, it goes almost 34Brix, which translates to 1.135 SG

Today I measured my fermenting wort: 1.060


Now what? I'm thinking of pitching some WLP099 or WLP028 (bought both) to make it less sweet. It tastes good, but i think it tastes more like a barley wine at this stage.

It's only been 10 days since pitching? Let it ride.

Really? How many abv does Nottingham endure? It must be around 10% right now

You might want to add a couple gallons of water to the beer, then re-pitching some yeast, since you over-shot the OG by a ton.

FarmerTed said:

You might want to add a couple gallons of water to the beer, then re-pitching some yeast, since you over-shot the OG by a ton.

Click to expand...

sad but true... though it can be the beginning of a new scottish ale: WAY heavy.

third day in a row reading 1.060 @ 21C

I think Notty is gone X_X

If you put just a drop on your refractometer, it should have cooled down to ambient temperature by the time you made the measurement. A drop of wort has a small thermal mass.

bohrier said:

I didnt cool the wort before reading the refractometer after boiling. My friend just told me his refractometer does not compensate for temperature. Assuming it was at 70C when I measured it (blowed it like hot food so it wouldnt break the thing), I did the math here.

it measured 28Brix at the time. Compensating temperature to 20C, it goes almost 34Brix, which translates to 1.135 SG

Click to expand...

You need to wait for your beer to finish fermenting before you transfer to secondary. Secondary vessels are for clearing/fining - you don't really want fermentation to continue at this point. Autolysis is pretty rare - I highly doubt you'll experience it.

it seems to have finished... 3 day @ 1.060 =/

I think i'll pitch in some wlp0099 or wlp028

today I have borrowed the same refractometer I used at the brewday. Tested it with different sugar water concentrations at different temperatures. The damn thing compensates the temperature, unlike my friend told me.

NOW the calculations to correct the alcohol deviation make sense:

initial brix was 28, 1.115 SG
current brix is 15.2, 1060 SG - Corrected for alcohol, 1.023 (was getting 1006 before)

which makes more sense and gives me a bit of hope.

I think i'll calm down now. ant: