brew day: imperial milk stout

[mdunlap85]

another successful brew day: 5 gallons of imperial milk stout in the fermenter. the hygrometer reading didn't jive with the spectrometer reading though... spec showed 25 brix (converted to s.g. should be 1.100) right? , hygro showed 1.090... not sure what that's about, i'm still kinda new to using a spectrometer and to the all grain world, so maybe i missed something. if anyone wants to throw out a guess as to what happened there i'd welcome it.

bottled our Amarillo hop bomb; we made 10 gallons of it, and dry hopped 5. the non-dry hopped batch was awful... just terrible... so we dumped it (and cried... at great length, deep sobbing, it was ugly). the dry hopped batch was phenomenal, a huge difference. next time we make this we'll double the hop additions, utilize gypsum, and definitely dry hop the whole batch. flavor profile: grapefruit and melons, very light, but this was out of the secondary (conditioned there for a month) so the carbonation was very slight. we'll see in the few weeks when it is done bottle conditioning but i think it's gonna be great.

 

[CA_Mouse]

Dry hopping most likely masked whatever problem you found with the non-dry hopped. Did you keg it or bottle it? If you kegged it, you could probably just dry hopped it in the keg and let it sit for a week or so, then re-set the CO2 pressure and tried it again. But since you didn't say what was wrong, there is no way to help you determine if it was a procedure issue or an actual batch issue.

 

[mdunlap85]

thanks for the reply; the problem was almost definitely a combination of bad water for the beer type and not enough hops for the brew... i was probably at about half what i needed to be throughout the whole boil. i agree completely that the dry hop and extended secondary masked this foul up. i am fairly confident this was the problem with that batch, so no real mystery there. thanks anyway though!

 

[dphornguy]

Well from what you are saying, it doesn't really sound like you had a contimination issue, just that you didn't like the flavor profile you got. Next time I would suggest not practicing alcohol abuse and just rehop the beer. If the difference REALLY only was dry hopping you still could have saved the other one.

Heck even if you overbitter your beer in the boil you can always make a sweet batch (or vice versa) to bring the overall IBU to something more desireable. Just food for thought. Its a shame to ever let brew go to waste if you can save it. Plus, that way you learn all sorts of things about your process.

 

[mdunlap85]

Yea I never thought I had a contamination, but it never occurred to me to dry hop the beer after a month in the secondary (not sure why... noob error I guess). Thanks for the advice; I’ll certainly remember it next time.

To clarify (beer pun) i wasn't really looking for aid on the Amarillo issue, but i certainly appreciate the input. I wasn't exactly fishing for "beer tech support" in any fashion, but again i welcome any input, so thank you guys. i was just looking to chat beer...BUT if you are interested in solving a problem, the hygrometer reading not matching with what the spectrometer is really bugging me... i am inclined to trust the hygro, only because that’s what I’m used to using.

Update on the brew: i have a vicious fermentation going on; it blew the bung out of the carboy (not enough head space for the krausen... noted). This is my first time using a blow off tube, and once i secured (duct taped) the bung in again (after sanitizing it) it was bubbling audibly... pretty awesome.