Help with my first brew - did I screw up?

So I finally bit the bullet and bought a home brewing starter kit last night - it's something I've always wanted to do and I had a little extra cash, so I figured why not. Everything went pretty well, except for one detail - I'm not sure if I added too much of one of they syrups they gave me at the store, and I was wondering if anyone could clear it up for me.

The beer kit I got was a John Bull homebrew kit, and its instructions said to just add sugar and water when making the wort. The instructions the store I bought the starter kit from said to ignore the instructions that came in the John Bull can, and that instead of using table sugar or corn sugar I should use this 4-lb can of malt extract syrup that they gave me. Thinking back I remember the lady said that it would last for about 2.5 batches of beer, though she didn't specifically say how much should go in each batch.

Anyways, while I was making the wort I couldn't find a consensus agreement on how much of the malt extract to use. The written instructions from the store, which I *thought* would explain exactly how much of each can to use, just said to mix the ingredients mix from the John Bull can and the malted extract from the other can into the boiling water, but it didn't clarify how much of each. The John Bull instructions said to use 1 kg of sugar, but I had no idea how much of the malt extract would be equivalent to this. I checked out www.howtobrew.com but couldn't find anything that would clarify this, it just said to add the "hopped pale malt extract syrup" to the boiling water and continue.

So anyways, to make a long story short, I compromised and ended up using the entire can of the John Bull mix and about 4/5ths of the can of the pale malt extract. Everything else went off without a hitch, it's now merrily fermenting away in my carboy, but is it going to taste terrible when the whole process is done?

Thanks a lot for your help and for your patience with a new brewer!

What was your original gravity?

No it won't taste terrible! It'll taste much better than it would have if you would have used sugar in it. But, could you post the entire recipe you used? If you put down the weights of the cans and the amount of water, I'll be able to see what your starting gravity was (I assume you didn't take one with a hydrometer?) and be able to tell you more!

Well, what I used was...

5 gallons water (2 went directly into the fermenter, 3 to boil the malt extract)
3.96 lbs John Bull ale malt extract
~3.25 lbs Alexander's Sun Country pale malt extract
1 packet (11 g) of Nottingham ale yeast added in the fermenter once the wort was cooled.

Being new at this (and therefore stupid) I didn't take the specific gravity before I put everything in the fermenter. I will next time though.

whiskeyinthejar said:

Well, what I used was...

5 gallons water (2 went directly into the fermenter, 3 to boil the malt extract)
3.96 lbs John Bull ale malt extract
~3.25 lbs Alexander's Sun Country pale malt extract
1 packet (11 g) of Nottingham ale yeast added in the fermenter once the wort was cooled.

Being new at this (and therefore stupid) I didn't take the specific gravity before I put everything in the fermenter. I will next time though.

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I assume both extracts were prehopped? That amount of LME would give you an og of 1.052 which sounds ok.

Yooper Chick said:

I assume both extracts were prehopped? That amount of LME would give you an og of 1.052 which sounds ok.

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I believe that the John Bull can was hopped but not the Alexander's Sun Country one, since it says that you should add 1 to 1 1/2 ozs of hops while boiling.

I did some more reading in Papazian's book and I think my mistake was assuming that there was supposed to be some type of 1-1 correlation between how much sugar the John Bull recipe suggested and how much of the extra malt extract I put in... looking at the chart on pg. 22 it looks like I have a little more than 7 lbs of malt extract and no sugar for 5 gallons of water which should lead to "Excellent real beer, full flavor, high alcohol, full bodied, sweeter palate" sounds good to me

Thank you everyone for your help, sorry for the noobish mistake. I'll do my homework next time.

whiskeyinthejar said:

"Excellent real beer, full flavor, high alcohol, full bodied, sweeter palate" sounds good to me

Thank you everyone for your help, sorry for the noobish mistake. I'll do my homework next time.

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No problem with helping- that's why we're here! Your beer will be a little underhopped since hops should have been added to the second extract but really, that's ok. You're going to have beer! When the fermentation is done, take a sg sample and taste it- I bet you'll be pleased!

Sounds like you'll be okay, a little on the sweet side but still beer. I'd recommend stepping up to one of the extract+steeping grains+hops kits next time, more enjoyable brew day and better tasting beer.