First brew day 9; hopefully things coming along nicely?

I brewed my first batch of homebrew on the 7th and I recorded 1.050 as the OG and the bock recipe listed 1.066-1.068 as the expected OG. I relaxed, didn't worry, and enjoyed a beer as instructed but had a nagging feeling in the back of my head that something was amiss.

I waited until today; day 9, to take my first gravity reading since brewing day. It was 1.016. I will continue recording the gravity for the next few days since I'm pretty sure the beer is done but again the gravity is lower than what the recipe states for the FG(1.020-1.022). I'm going to assume this is simply because my OG was lower and that everything is going to work out fine.

When I was cleaning my brewpot on the 7th I noticed that I had some burnt malt on the bottom of the pot(probably because I have an electric stove) and I had heard that I should get something to raise the pot above the burner a bit to help reduce this. Now, I can't imagine that a little burning would cause the gravity to be reduced by that much so should I be concerned or did I simply not let the specialty grains steep for long enough before I boiled?

Thanks in advance; I can't wait to get my 2nd brew in the pot(and fermenting!).

I've had messed up gravity readings before similar to this. The biggest factor I think was taking the OG reading after mixing the wort with the top-off water. Otherwise you get pockets of faulty readings.

First of all, congrats on the first brew!

Steeped specialty grains do not add a significant amount of gravity to the recipe. Most unexpected OG readings from extract brews can be blamed on incomplete mixing of the partial boil with the top-off water - if the extract and water quantities are correct it's pretty difficult to miss the gravity by more than a couple of points. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

As for the wort scorching - I'm not sure. I use gas, and don't have that problem. My only suggestion (if you don't do this already) is to move the pot completely off the burner while adding extract, and mixing very thoroughly before putting it back on for the boil. It takes a pretty good amount of stirring to completely mix the extract with the water.

I aerated the wort quite a bit before I had a chance to take an OG and pitch the yeast since I had a pretty lengthy cooldown time so I can't imagine I hadn't mixed the wort and top off water so I don't know.

I didn't think about moving the wort off the heat to add in the extracts; not sure why. I'll try that for brew #2!

Ideally I wanted this brew to be ready for my birthday on the 2nd(or at least 4th of July weekend). Is it going to harm my beer bottling it "early"?

Would it be better to leave it in primary for another week and let it bottle for only a week and crack 'em open?

I'm sorry to say, but it probably won't be ready - and it certainly won't be in it's prime that soon. Most of my brews are drinkable about 7-8 weeks from brew day, and higher gravity styles (like your bock) can take even longer for the flavors to mellow out and lose that green flavor. I'm not trying to ruin your party, just trying to pass along some experience and spare you some of the disappointment that most of us had with our first couple of brews.

It should spend at least 2 weeks in the fermenter (3-4 is preferable, or another two in a secondary vessel). Bottling too early is the #1 cause of bottle bombs, and also leaves a lot more sediment in the bottles. The bottle carbonating process often takes 3 weeks for complete carbonation. You might chill and crack a bottle after the second week and find adequate carbonation, but it might not taste quite right yet. If you have a kegging system it might be do-able because you can carbonate it quicker, but again you still have the inadequate aging problem.

A hefeweizen style is the quickest style I know of - because it tastes good fresh (green) and also seems to bottle carbonate quicker because of the large amount of suspended yeast. Heck, if you keg you could start a batch next week and still conceivable have it ready by the Fourth. But most other styles don't respond well to quick schedules.

Oh well, looks like I'm going to have to invest in some more fermenters; I don't want to wait that long for my bock to be emptied out before I start my next batch!

I currently only have one fermenter; should I pick up another and rack the beer into secondary or is it going to be alright to keep it in primary for 3-4 weeks?

Not a big deal that it won't be ready for the 4th; was just hoping haha

Don't mess with the beer, just get another bucket to ferment in. I leave mine in primary for about a month then bottle and condition for about 3wks at 70*.

Buckets are cheap, buy some more! I've only been brewing since early this month but can't stop myself and by next week I'll have 3 buckets and 3 better bottles. I'd brew every weekend if I could.

Since none of my beer will be ready until close to the end of July I'm just using this time to suck down as many Bell's and Sierra Nevada I can so I can build up my bottle collection to handle all the upcoming brew

Either way - a friend gave me two 5 gallon glass carboys so I use them as secondaries, freeing up my primaries (buckets). If I didn't have those free carboys, I might have just bought a couple more buckets and go the long primary route. I do like to dry hop, though and the secondaries are handy for that.

At any given time I have 3-4 beers going in various stages (plus what I have bottled and kegged). Gotta keep that pipeline full!

Day 14 and I'm absolutely dying to get this beer finished! Patience is not a virtue I was graced with. I'm holding strong and aiming to bottle around July 1st so hopefully everything will turn out great and be ready for drinking mid month.

At least I'll be busy with work for the next week and a half to keep my mind off of it. I haven't had time to find a LHBS in the area(the one I picked up all my gear from was up in Toledo when I was visiting family which is about 3 hours away).

I'll be in Columbus area early next week so I'm hoping to hit up the Winemaker's Shop on High Street and hopefully snag some more fermenters and get some ingredients to start up my next few batches.

Auspice said:

I don't want to wait that long for my bock to be emptied out before I start my next batch!

Click to expand...

You most certainly do not! I made this mistake with my 1st brew (brewed on 3/21). I wanted to taste my 1st batch before starting another so I could fix any flaws. The beer had no detectable flaws, and I'm still paying for waiting that long. My 2nd beer will be ready hopefully in a couple of days though.

I just snagged a couple of 5 gal carboys at my LHBS. It's now day 16; is it to late to rack my brew into one of them? I'm planning to bottle on day 25.

Also got the ingredients for my 2nd brew and am hoping to get it made this week; I'm sure I'll make a thread about it shortly.

It's not too late. If you're going for a secondary, you want to get the beer off the yeast by about 14 days to reap that part of the benefits (16 days should be pretty good). For you in this case, it would free up your primary, which would be good.

In the future, you might want to decide if a secondary fermentation is right for you. Do a search for "long primary no secondary" and you will get a ton of results.

I don't plan on keeping my future brew in primary as long now that I actually have a pair of carboys. I only waited this long because I honestly wasn't expecting to get more gear this soon.

I plan on having my next batch in primary for 7 days and secondary for 14 then age it for 14.

I figure if I have 2 carboys I can rack my beer into them and free up my primary to make more!

Self bumping since I just racked it into my new glass carboy. When the plastic primary was about half full the auto-siphon started making a slurping sound and the last 2 2-1/2 gallons of wort seemingly got aerated. When the carboy was filled up, there were some bubbles on the top of the wort; should I be concerned about oxidation? Yes, yes, RDWHAB etc right? Seriously though, is there anything I did wrong? I followed the siphon instructions and read all the threads about how to prevent aeration but it still happened.

Auspice said:

Self bumping since I just racked it into my new glass carboy. When the plastic primary was about half full the auto-siphon started making a slurping sound and the last 2 2-1/2 gallons of wort seemingly got aerated. When the carboy was filled up, there were some bubbles on the top of the wort; should I be concerned about oxidation? Yes, yes, RDWHAB etc right? Seriously though, is there anything I did wrong? I followed the siphon instructions and read all the threads about how to prevent aeration but it still happened.

Click to expand...

It should be ok, but it's definitely not usual. Did you have the receiving vessel on the floor, and the primary pretty high up, so gravity could work? Did you maybe get a little clog? Did you keep the tip of the siphon above the trub but below the first couple of inches of beer? And, did you keep the tip of the tubing in the receiving vessel at the very bottle of the carboy, so it wouldn't splash?

Sometimes, I'll get an airbubble in the tubing where the racking cane curve meets the tubing. If you pinch that bubble, it stops doing that and keeps siphoning.

I had the primary on my kitchen counter and the carboy on the floor; I kept the siphon a couple of inches below the waterline until it got low then I pressed it against the corner of the fermenter. The end of the hose was at the very bottom of the carboy so no splashing was happening there, just the bubbling from the line. There were no noticeable bubbles in the line at all other than the tiny ones coming from the end of siphon that was in my primary.