A couple of quick questions.

Hi,

I brewed my first batch of beer this evening, but I'm not entirely certain I did it right and just want to get some feedback.

I brewed an Irish Red Ale. The homebrew supply store sold me the dry malt extract, a can od Crystal Amber malt, bittering hops, finishing hops, grain and bag, and primer. I followed the instructions but ran into a couple of things that weren't addressed in the store's instructions or Papazian's Complete Joy of Homebrewing, 3rd Edition.

1) When I finally took the wort off the stove and put it in the sink to cool, the wort had the consistancy of molasses. Is this normal?

2) When the wort cooled some, it developed a tan colored film on top. Is this normal?

3) When it came time to siphon the wort into the primary fermenter, the sheer thickness of the wort I had meant that the auto-siphon was barely working. Additionally, between the thickness of the wort and the film on top, I had no way to know where not to siphon to sediment. some of this sticky wort couldn't be sucked up by the auto-siphon and I wasn't sure about sucking up the film on top so I didn't. Are there any tips on how to proceed?

4) When I took my initial specific gravity figures, I came up with 1.020 when the instructions indicated I should be between 1.040 and 1.045. What could I have done wrong and how can I avoid that in the future?

Thanks.

You won't like the answer. It sounds like you didn't add the dry/liquid extract to about 2.5 gallons of boiling water. The water is necessary to prevent cooking the extracts and creating caramel/molasses.

If that's the case, chalk this one up as a learning experience and get yourself back to the LHBS to pick up your next kit! And, never hesitate to ask questions before/during/after your brew sessions.

Welcome to HBT!
It sounds like it went fine but you might be working on some not misinformation but maybe lack of experience.
You probably could have used a bit more water in your boil so your wort wasn't so thick. No, this will not mess up your beer.

Film and floaties are all pretty normal. Wait until you get a big ugly krausen if you want to be weirded out. No, this will not mess up your beer.

I just dump the whole pot in the primary. Too much trouble trying to siphon and dumping helps aerate the batch.

It is more common that not that your measured gravity will be off. All it means is that when you took your reading, you got more top off water than wort. It is really hard to get them to mix but this is not a problem. The yeast will find the sugar just fine and your beer will not be ruined.

In case you haven't caught on yet, it is really hard to ruin beer.

Yeah you should have a medium to dark brown liquid the consistency of water. You "may" be able to add purified water and yeast to your "molasses" but the beer is probably going to taste like a$$, brewing it for an hour with little to no water has probably done it in a bad way but I would probably try however you have to remember I keg so you'll be out of about 2hrs of bottling time vs. about 15 minutes for me so it may not be worth it.

Thanks for the replies. The instructionc that came with the kit called for 2 quarts of water for soaking the grains, two quarts for the sparging, then add the dry extract and liquid extract the bittering hops and boil for an hour (finishing hops in the last five minutes), for just about a gallon of liquid. I thought that sounded, and looked like not much liquid, but I trusted the instructions.

So how just much water should I boil then?

I hope Nurmey is correct, essentially yeast like feasting on sugar water (wort) to create the beer so they don't really care much about the quality of the wort as long as they have food which will mean you will have alcohol in your final product but that tells little about the final taste. I'm just a bit worried that you scorched the wort by boiling it that thick.

Nurmey said:

Welcome to HBT!
It sounds like it went fine but you might be working on some not misinformation but maybe lack of experience.
You probably could have used a bit more water in your boil so your wort wasn't so thick. No, this will not mess up your beer.

Film and floaties are all pretty normal. Wait until you get a big ugly krausen if you want to be weirded out. No, this will not mess up your beer.

I just dump the whole pot in the primary. Too much trouble trying to siphon and dumping helps aerate the batch.

It is more common that not that your measured gravity will be off. All it means is that when you took your reading, you got more top off water than wort. It is really hard to get them to mix but this is not a problem. The yeast will find the sugar just fine and your beer will not be ruined.

In case you haven't caught on yet, it is really hard to ruin beer.

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Could be a typo - maybe it meant 2 gallons for soak and 2 quarts to sparge? Before you start adding extract, you want about 2.5 - 3 gallons.

Can you detail the steps you took. It is hard to get a good feel of your process via your inital post. IE, how much liquor and how much DME did you use? Did you top off after putting wort into fermenter? Did you top of in boil kettle? What was your start boil amount, end boil amount? You may have thick wort due to to little water used. In this case just add water, mix well and pitch your yeasties. If not, you will just have a thick beer. Red's typically have a nice full mouth feel so I feel pretty confident you are ok. No matter. DO NOT THROW AWAY WHAT YOU HAVE. It will be fine. If it is thicker than you want just add water.

Yeah man you need about 3 gals before you start your boil. Top it off with some boiled, then cooled water. I would recommend about 3 gals. Im not sure what size batch you are trying to go for but top your fermenter off up to that amount with sanitized water and mix well. You will be fine from then on.

For most std. batches you want to yield 5 gallons after the boil. Its been a while since I did an extract batch but IIRC usually you steep the specialty grains (in your case they had you sparge afterward) then add the extract. You will add additional sanitized water after the boil to get 5 gallons. The amount of water you add before brewing is largely determined by the pot size you have, the larger the pot the better. Full boils are the best when no top off water needs to be added after brewing.

StevenR said:

Thanks for the replies. The instructionc that came with the kit called for 2 quarts of water for soaking the grains, two quarts for the sparging, then add the dry extract and liquid extract the bittering hops and boil for an hour (finishing hops in the last five minutes), for just about a gallon of liquid. I thought that sounded, and looked like not much liquid, but I trusted the instructions.

So how just much water should I boil then?

Click to expand...

bigin31 said:

Can you detail the steps you took. It is hard to get a good feel of your process via your inital post. IE, how much liquor and how much DME did you use? Did you top off after putting wort into fermenter? Did you top of in boil kettle? What was your start boil amount, end boil amount? You may have thick wort due to to little water used. In this case just add water, mix well and pitch your yeasties. If not, you will just have a thick beer. Red's typically have a nice full mouth feel so I feel pretty confident you are ok. No matter. DO NOT THROW AWAY WHAT YOU HAVE. It will be fine. If it is thicker than you want just add water.

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I was shooting for a 5 gallon batch.

I got the yeast going
I soaked the grain in the bag in 2 quarts 150 degree water for 30 minutes
I sparged the grain bag with two quarts of 170 degree over about 15 minutes
I had roughly 1 gallon in the brew pot and I added in 3 pounds of Light DME (2-3 SRM) and 3.3 pounds (1 can) of Briess CBW Sparkling Amber Pure Malt Extract.
I brought this to a boil and added in 1oz of bittering hops and boiled for 55 minutes.
I then added in 1/2oz of finishing hops and boiled for an additional five minutes.
I put the brew pot in the sick of ice water until the temperature was about 100 degrees. I don't know what the end amount left in the brew pot was, just that it was very thick and had a film on top that I wasn't expecting.
I then added that to my primary fermenter that had one gallon of cool water already and gave it a violent mixing.
I then topped off until the fermenter had 5 gallons and pitched my yeast.

I thought that there wasn't enough liquid, but it never occured to me that the instructions the homebrew store sent me would be that wrong. The instructions even wrote out "quarts" andstead of using abbreviations (e.g q instead of g)

Dude that is going to be a tasty brew. No worries. I don't think your instructions were wrong. As long as they told you to top off at the end to 5 gal. When you took your hydro reading did you adjust for temp?

bigin31 said:

Dude that is going to be a tasty brew. No worries. I don't think your instructions were wrong. As long as they told you to top off at the end to 5 gal. When you took your hydro reading did you adjust for temp?

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No. The temperature of the primary fementer (according to the thermometer on the glass) was 73 degrees and I got a specific gravity of 1.020.

Next time it might be easier to boil with more water, top off with less. See other posts.
but yes, it will be beer!

Oh, and WELCOME to HBT and to your new obsession! Now pick out your next batch and keep reading threads!

+1 Hang Glider. Steven your beer is in good shape. In the future you can add more water to the boil if you want and top off with less. Recommendations are to boil with less because it makes the kettle easier to handle, not as heavy. But you being the manly man that you are, I mean you brew your own beer, what isn't manly about that?, you can add more water to the boil. I would recommend adding a gallon. Then just top off with less. The gallon in the fermenter before you pour the wort is critical though. This lowers the temperature of the wort from 100, from the sink, to a pitchable 80. Unlike lower temperatures, yeasties go dormant, higher temps kill yeasties. Low yeast count bad. I wouldn't worry about your gravity reading. It will not effect flavor, just ABV. If you have a week beer then next time either make a smaller batch, 4 gal instead of 5, or add either dextrose or flaked maize, about 1# should be good, to raise the gravity a little. Neither of these will add to color or flavor significantly.

Its pretty straight forward, just boil with as much water as your pot can handle without overflowing as long as you aren't over you final volume of 5 gallons (if you're new to brewing you probably just have a 3-4 gallon pot). Then just top off up to 5 gallons after cooling the wort. Sorry the instructions sucked. I've never been to a local brew shop just ordered online, from what I've heard some are better than others. I'd be pretty pissed if a brew shop sold me a recipe that made molasses consistency wort, because where you're at you can't tell the difference in crap instructions and good ones.

sounds like you made beer!! the gravity reading is low probably because the top off water sets on top of the wort and does not mix well. when you pulled your sample, you got way more water than wort.

I think worst case, you could have scorched your "molasses" a little during the boil. If not, this may surprise you and turn out ok.
You have already heard that you just needed to add about 2 more gal of water to your boil.

I'd like to thanks everyone for their replies. Just a quick update on the beer I'm trying to brew (key word being try).

I racked it to the secondary fermenter this morning. Again, following the unreliable instructions from the homebrew store, I waited until the airlock had slowed to about one burst every 15 seconds. My apartment is cool (64deg.) and I'm wondering if maybe that was one of the reasons the primary fermentation took longer than the 3-4 days I was expecting. My specific gravity was 1.018. It smells like beer, but is far more cloudy than I expected. We'll see.

I did relearn an important lesson. When I was transferring from the primary to secondary vessels, my siphon just stopped. It took me a few seconds to figure out that whole equilibrium thing. The fermenters were on the same level and once the liquid was at the same level in both vessels, simple air pressure wasn't going to move any additional beer. Got the primary fermeter elevated and restarted the process and it worked like a charm. The sad thing is I was taught this way back in elemetary school. But still, it's a lesson learned.

Hey StevenR - just bottled my first brew, and like you, had some issues with brew day. The important thing though is to keep going with it, and see what happens when you are finished with bottling. For me, the most important thing was keeping a log book of everything I did, step by step, including notations for where I thought things went wrong. When I did my second batch, indeed, I learned a few things and am looking to see what's happened, what's changed and whatnot. Just hang in there and in a few weeks you'll have BEER.