2nd batch Follies (this is a long one)

[jabberwalkie]

As you can tell by the title I'm new to home brewing and I've notice that the only way I truly learn is by failing. On my venture to be a good home brewer I decided that I would have to take the most basic ingredients and form my own recipe in order to get a reel appreciation of what each additive brings to the table.

My first batch was a full grain 1 gal kit (an amber for$11 on amazon), i loved the experience and was semi in love with the brew I produced. I was immediately hooked and bought several books on brewing. For my next batch I thought it would be a good idea to be as simple as possible malt extract, hops and done. Being new to brewing and living in an apartment the one gallon size fits....for now. So here I give you the abbreviated notes on my second batch brew:

Style: ? (somewhere between a strong ale and a wee heavy)
Batch size: 1 gallon
Boil size: 1 1/2 gallon
Estimated O.G. : 1.070 O.G. :1.074
Estimated F.G. : 1.013 F.G. : 1.011
Estimated SRM: 11.8

Ingredients:
2Lb Briess Amber LME
.25oz glacier pellet 60 min 5.9AA
.1oz glacier pellet 15 min
1/3 pack safale-us-05
1 tsp Irish moss

90 min boil

Brew day went great, looked at my notes from my previous brew day and smoothed out the kinks ( honestly how many problems is there when your day consist of adding LME and hops while boiling). The biggest issue was when pouring into my car boy. My screen on the funnel clogged and had to use a sanitized spoon to get the junk off it. After 24 hrs my blow of tube was bubbling away.

After 3 weeks in primary I bottled. I used brewers best conditioning tabs for the first time to shorten the entire bottling process, adding 4 tabs a bottle per the instructions. I like to try one bottle after a week of conditioning to compare how different the end product is. I was disappointed by the missing hiss of popping the top and lack of mist pouring out of the bottle. It has only been one week so I let it go, the rest of my taste test went great. Nice clear brew with good color and tasting of dark fruits. Rum raisin, fig and plum were over whelming with little hop smell, but i thought the proceeding carbonation would help mute some of the strong flavors. Another week pasted and another taste test was up. My anticipation was completely deflated at the sound when I broke the seal. Again under carbonated with the flavor almost exact as my first test. To fix this under carb I added just a pinch more yeast to every bottle, recapped and let sit for another 2 weeks. After letting the yeast do its thing I opened one to find that the carb hadn't increased what so ever. Frustrated at this point I figured it wasn't the yeast that gave out it was the amount of sugar so I dropped another 2 tabs in each bottle. Again another 2 weeks my limited supply sat, and after sitting in the fridge for a day I popped one open to find that the carbonation increased ever so slightly. Mad and done with this batch I drank the rest that night. Not exactly sure why it didn't carb up ( thinking it was either too much sanitation and killed off most of the yeast or not enough conditioning tabs). I haven't completely given up on conditioning tabs or even brewing yet.

All in all I consider this a semi-success. The color and ABV is what I was going for. The taste was not exactly to my liking but wasn't completely off putting. The real failure here was conditioning; lesson not completely learned but next batch should be even better.

 

[VagueSkunk]

Maybe your caps didnt have a good seal, that could be why the bottles never really carbed up. The gas just escaped off into the ether...

 

[freisste]

Hmmm. I doubt sanitation killed the yeast. Unless you sanitized with heat after bottling. More than likely not enough time or sugar. That's a relatively high alcohol percentage, so the yeast may work pretty slowly.

Did you get much sweetness in the taste? I would imagine based on your description that the fermented (pre-bottled) product should have been quite dry with a bit of alcohol to increase that perception. If you tasted sweetness, it seems likely to me that your yeast were not given enough time.

If it was indeed as dry as before you bottled, maybe there wasn't enough sugar (how big are the bottles and how much does each conditioning tab provide?). Or potentially bad seals? That seems unlikely to affect an entire batch.

What was the storage temperature?

Edit based on VagueSkunk: first time I read the OP, I assumed he was using swingtops. However, f you used a bad capper (or incorrectly used a good topper... no offense, it happens), it is certainly possible that poor seals affected the entire batch.