First time brewing, great way to burn your house down!

Well that's kinda what I mean. Mead is easier to play with up front. So I'll be able to express some creativeness right off the bat, while getting some beer experience under my belt. After a few batches of extract kits, once I have a good system for keeping proper temps and proper sanitation techniques, as well as a good grasp on documentation of my processes and how to take the gravity and all that stuff, I'm gonna move straight into all-grain brewing, and after getting a few batches of that under my belt, start working on my own recipes.

On paper it sounds easy, but that could take months before I have all that Down to where I feel comfortable brewing my own recipies

btw... one thing i saw that was very intriguing was to make a full 5 gallon batch of mead, but then rack them into 5 separate one-gallon carboys for flavorings.

since mead is so much easier to make, up front, that makes a lot of sense.

and 5 gallons of mead would last me a very long time.

Google "Joe's quick grape mead" and "Joe's no age mead.". There are a couple recipes that are pretty good in a month or so. They're a good way to get into the ins and outs of mead making.

Hello Again, Great learning experience, Always boil without lid, You want to leave the brew pot uncovered in order to allow dimethyl sulfides (DMS) to boil off. Don't feel bad at all, we all make mistakes, just 3 days ago I miss calculated how much water I could use for a dunk sparge on a BIAB with 13 lbs of grain, and yes 1+gal of 187 deg water all over everything including my wife and I, everyone's ok, no burns, I chalk it up to sh*t happens, we all make mistakes, learn from it, so it doesn't happen again.

And yes I have just switched over to doing All-grain BIAB.

Great atitude BTW and keep brewing, you and your brew will do just fine, if your beer dose have a hot alcohol bite, just age it for 3 to 6+ months in bottles or keg and that will help mellow it out, and yes I am speaking from experience on that too. lol

Good Luck an Cheers

Screw that! I'll deal with the extra alcohol flavor. I can't wait that long to drink my firs batch of brew ever!

And i was wondering. Is it just a strong alcohol FLAVOR that I got from the warm fermentation or is the brew itself actually more alcoholic? Because if it's more alcoholic, playing with fermentation temps is something I'm going to be really interested in messing around with

BobbiLynn said:

I once set my kitchen on fire trying to boil a chicken, and another time making potato pancakes.

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Mmmm...... potato pancakes

Nickh08215 said:

Screw that! I'll deal with the extra alcohol flavor. I can't wait that long to drink my firs batch of brew ever!

And i was wondering. Is it just a strong alcohol FLAVOR that I got from the warm fermentation or is the brew itself actually more alcoholic? Because if it's more alcoholic, playing with fermentation temps is something I'm going to be really interested in messing around with

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It's the alcohol flavor because it isn't ethanol that you are tasting when you get that "hot alcohol" flavor in beer that is fermented too warm. There are reports that this "hot alcohol" brings on the hangover headache but I haven't been able to prove that.

I was under the understanding that a hangover is caused by dehydration. And damn that sucks. So I get all the bad qualities of alcohol (the hot bite and the hangover) without the good qualities. But hey. It's a learning experience

Fermenting at the upper end of the temp range encourages the production of methanol, but this is really only a significant problem with fruit fermentation, as the methanol is primarily a product of yeast metabolizing pectins. Grain fermentations produce very small amounts of methanol.

unionrdr said:

Hot alcohol flavors are generally referred to as fusel alcohols. They come from high initial ferment temps. If it's not too bad/you caught it soon enough,they can be cleaned up in primary by allowing the yeast time after FG is reached to do so & settle out clear. Time in bottles can also help some. But if it's pretty bad you'll be stuck with it for the most part.

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+1 Fermenting with higher temps than the recommend fermentation temps for a particular yeast will produce fusel alcohol (=bad) in your beer.

Nickh08215 Screw that! I'll deal with the extra alcohol flavor. I can't wait that long to drink my firs batch of brew ever!
And i was wondering. Is it just a strong alcohol FLAVOR that I got from the warm fermentation or is the brew itself actually more alcoholic? Because if it's more alcoholic, playing with fermentation temps is something I'm going to be really interested in messing around with

LMAO I know exactly how you feel, waiting sucks.

I would highly recommend against fermenting at higher than recommended temps for each yeast, different yeast like different fermenting temps, fermentation temp management i.e. proper/controlled temp is very good for your beer.

Its just a strong alcohol FLAVOR that you got from the warm fermentation, if you want higher alcohol in a batch, do a quick search and you will find lots of threads on how to accomplish just that = add sugar, add malt extract, add more grain, yada yada yada, lots of ways to add alcohol, but they will change the profile of your beer too, so you will need to do some research to figure out how to properly accomplish what you want.

The simple/easiest way I can recommend, is to just order a high ABV kit and brew it for your next batch.

Cheers

Mine wasn't technically smoked. It was bbq'd on a propane grill with a smoker box. This imparts some of the smokey flavor but it's really a roasted/smoked Turkey. Here's mine early on. I brined it for 2 days, rubbed it down with an herb butter and stuffed a bunch of fruit in the body cavity:


Naturally I enjoyed some of my punkin' ale, but I also busted out one of my favorite commercial brews for the occasion:


In a thinly veiled attempt to bring this back around: OP; NO...higher temps aren't going to appreciably increase your alcohol content, and will only encourage production of bad tasting/headache causing alcohols.

From wiki:

The term fusel is German for "bad liquor".[1]

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