Id like to start by saying, hello to all, and that i am very excited to be on the forum. As a disclaimer this is my first post and i am rather new to brewing, also i will try to be as detailed as possible in attempts to make answering my questions easier.
To start i am trying to brew a christmas ale of no particular style, but was hoping for something nice to drink during the winter season.
The recipe follows: 6.4 oz Chocolate malt, 3.2oz roasted barley, 2.5oz Carapils, 3.5oz Victory malt, 3.5oz Munich malt, 6.4oz Flacked Oats, 6.4oz Caramel10, 32oz Maris Otter malt, 3Lbs light LME, 3Lbs pilsner DME, and 12oz molasses. The IBU's were about 33
I started by mashing all grains in a bag with 1.3 quarts of water per pound at 150-155F for 1 hour. Then i sparged, best i could, with same amount of water at 170F. Collected the wort from the cooler and toped the pot off to roughly 2.5gal and started the boil. I add the DME early on and the molasses, LME, and spices late in the boil. When it was all done i had 5gal with SG of 1.090 @73F. With everything sanitized and ready I then pitched 10g Nottingham dry ale yeast.
Then the problems started to set in. During the last two weeks in California(where i live) we have had a bit of a heat wave and the night i pitched the yeast it was about 75F, but by the next morning it was about 88F and the beer was fermenting like crazy. Without thinking about the temp to much i quickly moved the beer to the kitchen, put a blow-off tube on and started cleaning spilt foam and sanitizing all around the out side of the fermentor. After 48hours, still hot, i was able to put a normal airlock on it and move the beer to a slightly cooler place in the house where the ambient temp was about 80F. Since i have no AC i put a fan on it to do what i could and after a while i checked the temp of the beer for the first time, which was 83F. When i got back from that weekends trip the beer cooled down to about 76-77F. When All is said and done the beer fermented for about 12-13 days,which is where i am now, slowly dropping in temp i imagine and is now sitting at 75F with a FG of 1.013. the strange thing is it didn't really have any off smells, however the taste is a bit bitter,burnt, and dry and the color is lighter than i thought, like a deep brown/amber red. My questions are: Will i be able to drink this beer? With the high ABV and temp will there be a tone of fusel alcohols, which might make me sick? Should i rack to secondary now or let it sit on the yeast to "clean up"? If i should let it sit on the yeast, how long? And any other advice, beside keeping the beer cooler next time
, would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks to everyone in advance,
thestew
To start i am trying to brew a christmas ale of no particular style, but was hoping for something nice to drink during the winter season.
The recipe follows: 6.4 oz Chocolate malt, 3.2oz roasted barley, 2.5oz Carapils, 3.5oz Victory malt, 3.5oz Munich malt, 6.4oz Flacked Oats, 6.4oz Caramel10, 32oz Maris Otter malt, 3Lbs light LME, 3Lbs pilsner DME, and 12oz molasses. The IBU's were about 33
I started by mashing all grains in a bag with 1.3 quarts of water per pound at 150-155F for 1 hour. Then i sparged, best i could, with same amount of water at 170F. Collected the wort from the cooler and toped the pot off to roughly 2.5gal and started the boil. I add the DME early on and the molasses, LME, and spices late in the boil. When it was all done i had 5gal with SG of 1.090 @73F. With everything sanitized and ready I then pitched 10g Nottingham dry ale yeast.
Then the problems started to set in. During the last two weeks in California(where i live) we have had a bit of a heat wave and the night i pitched the yeast it was about 75F, but by the next morning it was about 88F and the beer was fermenting like crazy. Without thinking about the temp to much i quickly moved the beer to the kitchen, put a blow-off tube on and started cleaning spilt foam and sanitizing all around the out side of the fermentor. After 48hours, still hot, i was able to put a normal airlock on it and move the beer to a slightly cooler place in the house where the ambient temp was about 80F. Since i have no AC i put a fan on it to do what i could and after a while i checked the temp of the beer for the first time, which was 83F. When i got back from that weekends trip the beer cooled down to about 76-77F. When All is said and done the beer fermented for about 12-13 days,which is where i am now, slowly dropping in temp i imagine and is now sitting at 75F with a FG of 1.013. the strange thing is it didn't really have any off smells, however the taste is a bit bitter,burnt, and dry and the color is lighter than i thought, like a deep brown/amber red. My questions are: Will i be able to drink this beer? With the high ABV and temp will there be a tone of fusel alcohols, which might make me sick? Should i rack to secondary now or let it sit on the yeast to "clean up"? If i should let it sit on the yeast, how long? And any other advice, beside keeping the beer cooler next time
, would be greatly appreciated.Thanks to everyone in advance,
thestew
