First batch of beer

I have been making mead and wine for ~2 years but decided to try and get a few beers under my brew belt, starting with this:

Oak Aged Honey Wheat Beer - Eiche Betagt Honig Weißbier


FERMENTABLES:
7 lb - Liquid Malt Extract - Wheat
4 lb - Honey - (late addition)
1/2 lb Carapils
1/2 lb Caramel 40L

HOPS:
1 oz - US Fuggles, 5 min
1 oz - Palisade, 5 min

OTHER INGREDIENTS:
1 oz - Coriander, Time: 10 min
1 oz - Sweet orange peel, Time: 5 min
2 oz - Med+ Hungarian Oak, Time: 30+ days

Danstar - Munich Dry Wheat Yeast

Artesian well water from 200 yards up the street.


My biggest questions are things like this:

Is 1 lb of carapils & caramel enough to handle the thinning by 4 lbs honey?? More, less? I have 1 lb of each.

Would some smoked malt meld well with this?

Do my hops & adjuncts look reasonable?

I love heavy oaked wines & mead, so I think it would be OK, but advice is appreciated by real world experts in oaking beers.

Before adding my oak cubes I plan to sterilize them by using a bit of brandy, I figure the oak profile will just be reinforced but not significantly affect the ABV & flavor profile. Am I better off with another method??

Any other advice is also appreciated.

This is not to any style, or to any guidelines, just my own personal tastes, a few ideas from some of my favorite books & a vague notion of where I want this to end up... Thanks!!

OK, this will be going in the fermentor later tonight, just as soon as I get my kitchen all cleaned up that is. Also, as there were no responses saying good or bad, so I'll just forge ahead and try brewing my first batch with the knowledge I have from online and a couple of books.. I'll be sure to report back after the whole mess is put in the fermentor, then left to do it's thing for a couple of weeks/months...

I am adding an additional 4oz of smoked malt as well as the above ingredients...

Good luck with this... interested in how it turns out.

I have never brewed beer with honey or spices and the recipe in general is quite different, so that may be contributing to the lack of responses.

And... threads get buried around here within an hour.

I think that I am constitutionally incapable of making a regular recipe, except maybe the first time, then all bets are off...

I decided to get the starter going and rehydrate the yeast. I cooled the wort down, pitched them in and ~10 minutes later they're going for it, airlock blorping, etc. 20 minutes in and the krausen is forming, I think I've got a good strong colony.

EJM3 said:

I think that I am constitutionally incapable of making a regular recipe, except maybe the first time, then all bets are off...

I decided to get the starter going and rehydrate the yeast. I cooled the wort down, pitched them in and ~10 minutes later they're going for it, airlock blorping, etc. 20 minutes in and the krausen is forming, I think I've got a good strong colony.

Click to expand...

GO for it. What's the worst that's gonna happen? It comes out weird and you catch a buzz. Let us know how it all goes. With pictures!

I have to say that beer is WAY more fussy than mead, but it's also pretty darned versatile so as to brew almost anything to someone's liking... This is gonna be a fun aside to my fermenting obsession!

So it's all been steeped, boiled & been tossed into primary. I'm just waiting on my slurry, once that is decanted later tonight I plan on pitching and watching the yeastie beasties getting to work!

OG ended up at 1.066 instead of the 1.071 the recipe said to expect. I'm happy with that, it still provides me ~7% ABV. The smoke is not apparent in the wort, it is however bitter, with no real sweetness to back it up. But I'm new to beer so I have no idea what it is supposed to taste like either. We'll see...

I may not get around to pictures for this, but I do plan to make notes here online for a good record of what I perceive with my newbie to beer ferments senses..

Besides as it has been pointed out this is a rather unusual recipe. I am basing a few items from some of the books I have read, other from pure fantasy & everywhere in between. I'm curious as to how the flavors will develop and meld over time, this is a whole new canvas for me to paint and taste the results..

The slurry was finally ready for me at 0420 this morning, ended up taking a longer nap than intended, but also waiting for the temps to equalize to within 5°F. I'm confident that my fermentor and wort were as sterile as possible so have no worries on the MBio side.

Then just for curiosity I had a taste of my starter's extra liquid, actually wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Not sweet, but not alcoholic either, really not much flavor at all other than yeast. Kinda like BL, but with flavor...

After steeping the grains the water had a bit of color to it, but after adding the LME I was surprised by how dark the wort became & stayed. Rather molasses, dark black/brown colored. I tried sampling some of that wort as well.. Interesting is a good description I think...

I have been reading like crazy but there is no substitute to putting something in your mouth and getting the experience!

Here's a question for those with some knowledge in beer yeast and heat tolerances: Used Munich wheat yeast, said to keep temps under 72ºF, told my partner to not play with the heater as I was right at 72ºF for my fermentation temps. Explained why it's bad to go over the heat tolerance, asked him to keep it down for the next 3 or 4 days.

Wake up and the house is 73ºF, the beer is at 76ºF and climbing.

If nothing else I know I've got banana, clove, and esters. Hopefully not solvent like wine yeast tend to produce when run at high temps.

3-2-2015: OK, well it looks like I am not going to control the temps of this ferment so will go with the flow, looking like this for now...

I am keeping the house at 65ºF & the ferment is staying at 76ºF. There appears to be quite the exothermic reaction happening in my brew bucket at the moment that I was not expecting, prepared, nor equipped to handle. A fermentation that exceeds a 10ºF increase over the ambient temperature I have not come across, but I have only been making mead so only know of wine yeasts, not beer yeasts. Different beasties I am coming to find out.

The smell out of the fermentor is all kinds of pleasant ones like: Fruity (apple, peach, etc), floral (rose specifically, but quince as well), banana, roasting nuts, baking bread, a slight phenol (the smoke malt?), plus a dose of citrus (I had citra to dry hop just in case, but smells good!). There seems to be that slight sickly sweet smell I associate with fermenting honey, but it seems to be melding into the other scents.


3-3-2015: The temperatures in the fermentor seem to be leveling off now, I get a 73ºF reading when the house is at 67ºF. So I'm ramping the house back to the usual 71ºF to finish off this ferment and then we'll see how things turn out. Although It seems quite a bit darker than most wheat beer when I look at it in the fermentor the smells are still pure amazing with no off smells that I can detect.

The airlock has slowed considerably so I will just have to wait another couple of weeks for the fermentation to finish, the cleanup of fermentation byproducts will happen, then I can rack it onto the oak in secondary. I am thinking that 30 days on the oak should be sufficient for the maximum extraction of what they have to offer, but it may end up being longer. We'll see, as we are fond of saying in this household.

After that it's adding the priming sugar for bottling (I'm going with the same honey), then bottle conditioning for a few months before I see if it's drinkable or if I should be using it as weed killer instead of liver exerciser.

3-4-2015: Seems the ferment is coming to a closure as the airlock has slowed down considerably & the temperature of the fermentor is at 74ºF. I started with the fermentor at 11ºF above ambient, moved down to 6ºF, now is 4ºF above ambient.

3-5-2015: The fermentation temps are now at ambient (65ºF to 70ºF), the airlock has slowed to 1 burp every 15 seconds or so. I'm looking forward to this little experiment (ok, ok, so 6 gallons isn't little) with all the wondrous fruity, melon, banana, clove, floral & citrus smells coming from the airlock. I hope that I have enough residual sugars to make this a bit sweet & dextrins for a full bodied mouth feel. We'll see...

Our heater is in the basement of this antique house, so has intake ports that look like heat vents scattered about the house, my bucket is sitting above one of those vents. When the heater turned on the first few days the whole house had that pleasant smell going through it for a few minutes. Now it's just down to the corner of my fermentarium, but still amazing!!! No strange/weird/off smells at all...

EDIT SECTION BELOW

Checked the temp, holding at 68ºF, 2ºF below ambient. Airlock has quieted even more to only a blorp every 30 seconds. Smells out of the airlock are still amazing. Only 4 days and nights of active fermentation, so this puppy should be ready to rack in 10 more days, then I'll let this go for an additional 30 or more days to mature with some (2oz) Med+ Hungarian Oak.

Not much going on, literally. The temps are at or slightly below ambient, the airlock activity is down to once a minute, and the smell continues to be amazing. Now I just have to hope that translate into something that tastes as good as it smells right now.

It has been ~7 days since pitch, so right around March 14th, I'll be siphoning this into my secondary onto 2oz Med+ Hungarian oak for 30 days, maybe more. I have already prepared my oak by adding some brandy, let them sit for 1 minute, then drained them and sealed them into a 1/2 pint mason jar. I'm betting that they will be as sterile as possible by the time the 14th rolls around.

I'm using the brandy I poured off in making food items that benefit from some excellent oak flavor. I managed to pull most of the dust off in the brandy bath, so it's pretty intensely oaked and wonderful for making things like honey glazed confections...

Fermentation taking your barrel 8-10F above ambient temps is not uncommon. Some tips on how to keep your next batch cool:

• Try to cool your wort to your desired fermentation temp before transferring to your bucket and pitching the yeast.
• Pick up a large plastic laundry tub and fill it with enough cold water so that, when your bucket is in it, the water level is even with the wort level in your bucket. You'll get a swamp cooler effect that'll help keep your wort 3-5F cooler than if it was just sitting at ambient temps. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31MRnLCLpVL._SX300_.jpg
• Pick up some of those refreezable ice packs. Adding one or two to the laundry tub every ~8 hours can get you another 3-5F colder than just using the tub for the swamp cooler effect. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51oJQjCypDL._SX342_.jpg

Interested to see how yours turns out! I wouldn't worry about the high fermentation temps for this batch, you may get some slight off flavors but I've had beers turn out great despite fermenting 4-5F above the manufacturer's recommended temps. Now that I've got the setup described above, I can get within 1-2F of desired temps while keeping my house at 71F.

Juno_Malone said:

Fermentation taking your barrel 8-10F above ambient temps is not uncommon. Some tips on how to keep your next batch cool:

• Try to cool your wort to your desired fermentation temp before transferring to your bucket and pitching the yeast.
• Pick up a large plastic laundry tub and fill it with enough cold water so that, when your bucket is in it, the water level is even with the wort level in your bucket. You'll get a swamp cooler effect that'll help keep your wort 3-5F cooler than if it was just sitting at ambient temps. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31MRnLCLpVL._SX300_.jpg
• Pick up some of those refreezable ice packs. Adding one or two to the laundry tub every ~8 hours can get you another 3-5F colder than just using the tub for the swamp cooler effect. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51oJQjCypDL._SX342_.jpg

Interested to see how yours turns out! I wouldn't worry about the high fermentation temps for this batch, you may get some slight off flavors but I've had beers turn out great despite fermenting 4-5F above the manufacturer's recommended temps. Now that I've got the setup described above, I can get within 1-2F of desired temps while keeping my house at 71F.

Click to expand...

I have used that method on a couple batches of mead, works extremely well, but I never got a wild swing from the mead yeast fermenting! I use it because our house has no AC & can reach 82ºF in the height of Summer here. We are a bit over 100ºF in the Summer, and Winter is the opposite with us getting down to -10ºF Winter of 2013.

I'm definitely going to be doing it form now on no matter what, unless a high temp is needed.

I have to say that so far the extra heat does not seem to have made anything I associate with something being off (had more than one test batch of mead go bad). I'm getting lots of fruity, floral, estery, lightly phenol with a hint of sulfur (not unusual in a wheat I've been reading). So here's to hoping that a high temp ferment made me the ester bomb I'm looking for!!

Thanks for the great advice, I'm gonna need more note taking space soon!

Airlock activity is over 100 seconds between blorps BTW...

Just racked onto 2 oz Med+ Hungarian oak sterilized with brandy by soaking for 1 minute then draining completely and storing in a half pint jar for 2 weeks. Works for my mead!

This will sit for 30 days before being bottled (by then I hope to have all the bottles I need ready to fill), I'm shooting for 2.6 volumes CO2.

Looking forward to hearing how this turned out Like the other said, fermenting beer will raise the temp a bit living in Maine I have to choose what I brew with the temp of my old house in mind since I don't really have a way to keep a room warmer than 65 in the winter and summers will get to 80 inside I do have air conditioners in a couple rooms to help out though!

We do have one AC, the only one, it's in the bedroom, upstairs.

OK, my computer has dumped this twice, so here's the short:

I wanted a WHEAT beer, I got a brown ale. I added 32.7% honey, I've made mead from this same honey, it's not THAT dark. My LME was BLACK (before dilution), fermented to black/brown, has a brown head, thick overly malty over the hops & honey, floral/estery (my adjuncts/yeast/temp:expected), citrusy (adjuncts/hops:expected) going on.

I used hops to give me a 2.6 IBU (was aiming for sweet) & impart some characteristics (palisade 5 min, fuggle 5 min). I got: bitter, bitter, bitter... adjuncts... bitter...

I know the bitter will age out somewhat. But that black/brown, overly malty character, where the frell did that come from!?!!? My AG batch did/does not have those properties!

OK so it's been nearly 60 days since I racked this puppy over to secondary, I'm thinking I'll pull a sample tomorrow evening to see where it's at currently. I tried a tiny sample at 30 days and it was still quite harsh, so now I'll sample at ~60, if it's not quite there I'll think about another month in secondary. After that I know that the potential of the oak cubes is exhausted as I've oaked mead a few times already. Also if this continues to be a PITA it will just have to sit in secondary for a few more months until it calms down and integrates, I've got the time to sit on this & let it age as much as it needs, so we'll see...

This ended up sitting far longer then I was planning due to life happening at an accelerated pace for me. In the course of that sitting a couple of fruit flies made it into the airlock, the temps lowered & sucked something in, and a secondary fermentation has taken place. Damn fruit flies!!! The basetards have ruined more than a few batches of mine!!

Are you sure it's ruined?

I haven't tossed it yet, but it was still for 2 months after hitting it with K-Meta for aging, now it has a new dark layer of gunk on the bottom with large amounts of CO2 being bubbled out & bubbling up the sides as well. I'll be taking a sample & have a taste another day, for now I have just hit it with a mega dose of K-Meta to stop any further fermentation from continuing...

OK, finally grew the cojones to sample this experiment, so far after a few hours I haven't keeled over, tasting notes to follow. I grabbed a sample and got a SG of 1.005, same as when this puppy went into secondary with the oak. I'm not sure what would have caused such a thick layer of dark material to coalesce at the bottom, there was no formation of anything on the top or the oak cubes. Then there was the sudden carbonation of the entire thing all over again, it had been quiet for over 60 days, only fluctuating with the temperature. I noticed the airlock ticking again at a slow but steady rate of 15-20 blips a minute a week or so ago, I brought it into the kitchen then hit it with a dose of 5ml 10% K-Meta, the airlock has almost stopped, but there is still quite a bit of carbonation.

Tasting notes:

Dry, a bit thin, HUGE hit of coriander & orange peel, definite strong bitterness, indistinct flavors, then a hit of alcohol wipes it all away. Not sour, funky or any other off flavor I can detect, it's just the orange, coriander & alcohol mask anything else... This is going to be bottled in the next week or so, then left to age for at least a few more months, say until 2016 sometime. I have hopes for this in the future!

Deleted

EJM3 said:

OK, I'm completely confused & pretty well finished with this:

This has been sitting for a long time, during most of that time it's been fine. That is until I went to grab it for bottling, that's when I noticed it was very well carbonated. The FG was the same, so I hit it with K-Meta & left it for a while. I went back & it was fizzing away again, same FG, again. So I hit it with K-Meta, double dosed it at 20ml 10% K-Meta solution this time. It's carbonating back up yet again & still the same gravity, yet again. Plus there is a big layer of new dark lees, not sure what those are from after all that K-Meta.

I'm about ready to call it with this one. If there is some sort of contamination that allows it to over carb, I want it gone & not exploding in my kitchen! I have never had a bottle bomb & I don't plan to start now...

Click to expand...

Just age the bottles in a plastic tote with the lid on tight; any mess from potential bottle bombs should be safely contained.

Deleted

Things that may have caused the alcoholic/astringent flavors:


1) Poor fermentation temperature control.

2) All the honey



I'm betting both of these caused your beer to suck. Or it could just be that wacky recipe and it's supposed to taste like that. LOL.

Taste it bro? You may have a hellava sour there.

Jim311 said:

Things that may have caused the alcoholic/astringent flavors:


1) Poor fermentation temperature control.

2) All the honey



I'm betting both of these caused your beer to suck. Or it could just be that wacky recipe and it's supposed to taste like that. LOL.

Click to expand...

1) That was not underr my control as my partnerr had the heat in the house cranked up after asking him not to.

2) The honey will not cause the flavors I described, I have been making mead for 3 years now & honey does not ferment to bitter & alcoholic.

I came here to find usefull, constructive criticism, pointers & advice, not to be ridiculed & belittled by others. It's people like you that make fun of & demean other peoples efforts that make me want to quit posting, I've had a lot more than this batch that turned out great that I will now never post about. I despise being made fun of just so that you can feel better about yourself, have fun & F OFF.

Lol

+1 LOL

Interesting to read about this train-wreck of a beer till the OP got inexplicably deranged.

Shame... Was wondering how the unexpected fruit-fly adjunct would pan out.

Bizarre!

slym2none said:

Bizarre!

Click to expand...

This is nearly as bizarre. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=6950485&postcount=16

A bit of a recurring infection theme.

OP; if you do come back, you would be well served to invest in some Starsan and avoid the vodka and k-meta sanitizer. Cheaper and more effective.

Best of luck with your brewing.

EJM3 said:

1) That was not underr my control as my partnerr had the heat in the house cranked up after asking him not to.

2) The honey will not cause the flavors I described, I have been making mead for 3 years now & honey does not ferment to bitter & alcoholic.

I came here to find usefull, constructive criticism, pointers & advice, not to be ridiculed & belittled by others. It's people like you that make fun of & demean other peoples efforts that make me want to quit posting, I've had a lot more than this batch that turned out great that I will now never post about. I despise being made fun of just so that you can feel better about yourself, have fun & F OFF.

Click to expand...

Sorry you were offended by my post, I didn't mean to piss you off, sorry. I know the fermentation control is what it is, I'm just trying to explain why it tasted funky. High temperatures during fermentation just flat out taste bad, weird esters. As far as alcoholic flavors in your mead, you probably age your mead 6+ months right? Those alcoholic flavors tend to fade and improve with time, which is one reason I assume people age mead and to some extent ciders or even funky beers.

EJM3 said:

1) That was not underr my control as my partnerr had the heat in the house cranked up after asking him not to.

Click to expand...

Plenty more fish in the sea.