1st of all, great site. Been lurking around for a while trying to get all the answers to my questions prior to posting. Found most everything I needed, but wanted to confess my homebrew sins to get the opinions and hopefully a pardon from the HBT brewmasters.
A LONG story as short as possible, here are the main points.
"Honolulu Hefe"
7#'s MWE (syrup), .5# Light Crystal 10*L, .5# Wheat Malt, WL300 liquid yeast 1oz German Spalt hops.
No hydrometer yet...getting one next week.
All the pre-primary steps went very well. Paid close attention to detail on all temps, times, hot/cold break, etc... Got everything to the primary without a hitch, that's when everything went to crap.
Squirted a full air lock's worth of filtered tap water directly into my beer while trying to push in the air lock. (lesson learned)
Thermometer was off by almost 20*F so the bath of water my plastic bucket primary was sitting in was at nearly 91* for the first 12-24 hours. Needless to say had a VERY active primary and had to do a tactical airlock to blow-off tube change over. Didn't do it in time however and lid popped off on day two. After getting the temp under quasi control, fermentation continued at what I think to be normal. Kept bubbling for 3-5 days. (again, lesson learned)
Today is day 7 and my instructions say to rack to seconday, however I have decided to give it at least another 3-5 days in primary in order to rid any potential nightmare I created by the 90* early on. I know that's not going to be enough time, but its better than nothing.
I plan on leaving in secondary for at least 10 days before bottling. Hopefully that will help any off flavors. I tasted it today and it didn't taste all that horrible...but not good.
Is there anything else I can do besides give it time? I don't have any problems letting it sit in the bottles for a few months, but just want to make sure I don't miss any other options.
Also, since I am now down to a little over 4 gallons, when I prime can I just add more water to the corn sugar solution to get closer to the 5 gallon mark without watering down the beer?
More Q's to follow I'm quite sure.
A LONG story as short as possible, here are the main points.
"Honolulu Hefe"
7#'s MWE (syrup), .5# Light Crystal 10*L, .5# Wheat Malt, WL300 liquid yeast 1oz German Spalt hops.
No hydrometer yet...getting one next week.
All the pre-primary steps went very well. Paid close attention to detail on all temps, times, hot/cold break, etc... Got everything to the primary without a hitch, that's when everything went to crap.
Squirted a full air lock's worth of filtered tap water directly into my beer while trying to push in the air lock. (lesson learned)
Thermometer was off by almost 20*F so the bath of water my plastic bucket primary was sitting in was at nearly 91* for the first 12-24 hours. Needless to say had a VERY active primary and had to do a tactical airlock to blow-off tube change over. Didn't do it in time however and lid popped off on day two. After getting the temp under quasi control, fermentation continued at what I think to be normal. Kept bubbling for 3-5 days. (again, lesson learned)
Today is day 7 and my instructions say to rack to seconday, however I have decided to give it at least another 3-5 days in primary in order to rid any potential nightmare I created by the 90* early on. I know that's not going to be enough time, but its better than nothing.
I plan on leaving in secondary for at least 10 days before bottling. Hopefully that will help any off flavors. I tasted it today and it didn't taste all that horrible...but not good.
Is there anything else I can do besides give it time? I don't have any problems letting it sit in the bottles for a few months, but just want to make sure I don't miss any other options.
Also, since I am now down to a little over 4 gallons, when I prime can I just add more water to the corn sugar solution to get closer to the 5 gallon mark without watering down the beer?
More Q's to follow I'm quite sure.