puertobrewing
Member
Sorry but yes... another n00b freak-out thread. But first let me introduce myself since this is my first post.
I live in Puerto Rico and over here beer culture is very simple probably because of the climate. In a brief, we could say that us Puerto Ricans enjoy cold light pale lagers without complex taste for mainly two purposes, for partying, of course, and to quench the thirst after a hot day. Micro-brewery and craft beers are just making an entrance and I believe that its market will grow. For now we can quite easily get about 20-30 different craft beers in 7-11-like stores, and though it's not easy to find all, the distributor that is introducing them has an inventory of about 160-200 different beers from around the globe.
The scene is just forming but as for now, pretty much all the commercial beers that sell here are in my opinion nothing but glorified carbonated water with ± 4%ABV. Some examples of commercial beers that sell a lot here are Coors Light, Bud Light/Budweiser, Keystone, Corona Light and Extra, and Heineken's full and light versions. The only pale light lager that is probably the top seller and I enjoy is Medalla, which is locally produced and amazed me when I found out that after experiencing the incredible taste of craft beers, I still enjoy to drink them.
I think that sort of serves as an introduction for me. Now to my batch. First of all know that I have searched Google, I've been reading (John Palmer's book as many suggest through the web), and I also have read some threads and/or individual posts in this forum including the "Don't give up on beer story". Unfortunately, I still don't believe that I can have faith in this batch tasting something like beer and much less like the style is supposed to be.
THE BATCH:
I'm very fond of North Coast's Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout, so I asked my LHBS to suggest me a good tested recipe for imperial stout and he supplied me with the ingredients and a partial mash recipe. On brewing day, many things went wrong and I'll describe the process to see if anyone of you can point me out how severe or not were my errors. But first I'll describe the problem to help get an idea of what are the relevant woes of the process. I tasted the beer on bottling day and though it's not an offending taste, it doesn't taste like beer and definitely not like an imperial stout. You can say it is almost not sweet even for other not so sweet beer styles. I can't say it tastes like vinegar but I really think it is to dry and tastes like a mild version of cooking wine. The smell is hop-less but strangely it doesn't smell bad. Actually the smell reminded me of Belgian trappists like Rochefort 10. Not that it was exactly the same but fairly similar.
Now to the process. If there's something I'm sure I did well was the sanitizing, so I'm not going to describe that and you can assume sanitation was properly done, ruling out infestation. The recipe called for 6 lbs. of dark malt extract, 1 lb. of crushed specialty grains for steeping and 4 oz. of hops (2 oz. Willamette for 60 min., 1 oz. Cascade at 15 min. and another ounce of Cascade for the finishing).
To begin, I don't know why I put 4 gallons of water to boil in a 5 gallon pot, since I knew beforehand that I could just boil 3 or 2.5. It was probably the excitement of brewing for the first time. The reason I mention this is because that made me too cautious of boilovers and I think one possible failure could be that the boil was not vigorous enough.
The first road into wort was to steep the grains. As for this, I don't know if I left the grains long enough because I didn't put them from the beginning but instead after the water was hot enough that some bubbles formed in the bottom of the pot. When I believed water could be considered to be boiling, I took out the grains and threw the first hops. And so on I finished the wort boiling process. Gravity came about 1.071.
Now for chilling the wort, I didn't have an immersion or counter flow but didn't used ice either. I had the idea to put the pot on one side of the dual kitchen sink with running water, while avoiding spilling and circulating the water to the other side of the sink with a vinyl tube siphon-style. After 30 minutes I peeked at the wort and a lot of steam went out when I opened the lid. The wort was still very hot and even the submerged sides of the pot were still untouchable. Out of despair I improvised and decided that it would be better to throw the hot wort in the primary plastic fermentor that came with a stick-on thermometer so that I could see the temperature and know when it was ready for yeast. Since I didn't have ice and thought this method would work, I didn't have another option (especially at midnight) but to put the fermentor in the sink and continue the same failed chilling method. Finally, after 3+ hours the stick-on thermometer wouldn't even read it (it goes up to 78ºF only) but I knew that the wort was chilled as good as it could get at probably 85ºF, so I proceeded to the next step.
Being a n00b, I didn't know that when using dry yeast (I used SafeAle 05) you have to reactivate it and hydrate it. I just opened the yeast packet and threw it inside the fermentor. As for aeration, I got it wrong and I thought that throughout the whole brewing process wort/beer contact with air should be avoided to the greatest extent. Anyhow, the airlock started bubbling after about 12 hours and it kept like that during the most of the 1 week primary fermentation process. After that week, it was time for the secondary fermentation.
Again, I got it wrong. I siphoned the beer to my 5 gallon glass carboy for secondary fermentation and made two mistakes. First, I thought it would be a good idea to throw inside the carboy about 2 oz. of regular undissolved cane sugar before filling it with the beer from the primary so that the yeast could "get a boost" for the secondary fermentation process. Second, I believed that this was the time to aerate "so that the yeast could activate again". No air stone or anything but I agitated quite good the glass carboy. Anyway I read here that oxidation becomes a problem just after many months of storage. Before siphoning I took a sample out of curiosity to measure gravity and it was 1.015.
The beer stood in the secondary for three weeks, and a week ago, I underwent the bottling process. No problem there but for the fact that I also used regular cane sugar for priming (this time dissolved and as suggested by Palmer) because I couldn't find corn sugar and my LHBS was out of it. That's when I tasted the beer and even when I know it needs some weeks in the bottles, I was really disappointed. Like if that were enough, I don't know how it happened or even if it's possible, but gravity measurement came up higher at 1.021. Anyhow two thing must be considered for the higher gravity, one is the sugar addition in the secondary fermentor and that I used a different hydrometer because the first one fell to the floor and broke. I also took yeast from the slurry and tried to make a starter to see if yeast was still alive but got no results.
One last but probably the most important fact is temperature. Even on winter, temperature in Puerto Rico is around 80ºF in most areas. Inside my house I only use the air conditioner during the night to save on the energy bill but anyhow, my wife won't let me sleep with my beer (haha!), so the beer was fermented (covered with a box to keep it dark) on the living room behind a couch that is placed in front of a wall. The stick-on thermometer never gave me a reading but I can only guess that all 4 weeks of the fermentation process went no less than 80ºF but no more than 90ºF, anyway none are good and most probably the mean temperature must have been on the upper 80's.
Today, even when it has only one week in the bottle, I opened a Grolsh bottle that I filled with the last beer remaining in the bottling bucket and there are no signs of even the most minimal improvement. Only that bottle was placed directly in the fridge but I don't know if that's good or not. The other bottles are regular crown cap amber bottles. I opened the Grolsh one while writing so I could describe better the taste, and I also wanted to know if there was at least some minimal trace of carbonation but I also got absolutely none. The bottle didn't even make a sound when opened.
Well that's about it. It is a long post but I wanted to give the most details to see if most of you who obviously have more brewing experience than, me can tell me what went wrong and if I can still have some hope on this turning good or at least drinkable at some point. If not, could there be a way to fix it or should I just dump it? Thanks in advance for the answers and for the help. I have quite a busy schedule so I won't be able to check too often the thread but if someone needs to ask something that is not clear, I'll answer as soon as possible.
I live in Puerto Rico and over here beer culture is very simple probably because of the climate. In a brief, we could say that us Puerto Ricans enjoy cold light pale lagers without complex taste for mainly two purposes, for partying, of course, and to quench the thirst after a hot day. Micro-brewery and craft beers are just making an entrance and I believe that its market will grow. For now we can quite easily get about 20-30 different craft beers in 7-11-like stores, and though it's not easy to find all, the distributor that is introducing them has an inventory of about 160-200 different beers from around the globe.
The scene is just forming but as for now, pretty much all the commercial beers that sell here are in my opinion nothing but glorified carbonated water with ± 4%ABV. Some examples of commercial beers that sell a lot here are Coors Light, Bud Light/Budweiser, Keystone, Corona Light and Extra, and Heineken's full and light versions. The only pale light lager that is probably the top seller and I enjoy is Medalla, which is locally produced and amazed me when I found out that after experiencing the incredible taste of craft beers, I still enjoy to drink them.
I think that sort of serves as an introduction for me. Now to my batch. First of all know that I have searched Google, I've been reading (John Palmer's book as many suggest through the web), and I also have read some threads and/or individual posts in this forum including the "Don't give up on beer story". Unfortunately, I still don't believe that I can have faith in this batch tasting something like beer and much less like the style is supposed to be.
THE BATCH:
I'm very fond of North Coast's Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout, so I asked my LHBS to suggest me a good tested recipe for imperial stout and he supplied me with the ingredients and a partial mash recipe. On brewing day, many things went wrong and I'll describe the process to see if anyone of you can point me out how severe or not were my errors. But first I'll describe the problem to help get an idea of what are the relevant woes of the process. I tasted the beer on bottling day and though it's not an offending taste, it doesn't taste like beer and definitely not like an imperial stout. You can say it is almost not sweet even for other not so sweet beer styles. I can't say it tastes like vinegar but I really think it is to dry and tastes like a mild version of cooking wine. The smell is hop-less but strangely it doesn't smell bad. Actually the smell reminded me of Belgian trappists like Rochefort 10. Not that it was exactly the same but fairly similar.
Now to the process. If there's something I'm sure I did well was the sanitizing, so I'm not going to describe that and you can assume sanitation was properly done, ruling out infestation. The recipe called for 6 lbs. of dark malt extract, 1 lb. of crushed specialty grains for steeping and 4 oz. of hops (2 oz. Willamette for 60 min., 1 oz. Cascade at 15 min. and another ounce of Cascade for the finishing).
To begin, I don't know why I put 4 gallons of water to boil in a 5 gallon pot, since I knew beforehand that I could just boil 3 or 2.5. It was probably the excitement of brewing for the first time. The reason I mention this is because that made me too cautious of boilovers and I think one possible failure could be that the boil was not vigorous enough.
The first road into wort was to steep the grains. As for this, I don't know if I left the grains long enough because I didn't put them from the beginning but instead after the water was hot enough that some bubbles formed in the bottom of the pot. When I believed water could be considered to be boiling, I took out the grains and threw the first hops. And so on I finished the wort boiling process. Gravity came about 1.071.
Now for chilling the wort, I didn't have an immersion or counter flow but didn't used ice either. I had the idea to put the pot on one side of the dual kitchen sink with running water, while avoiding spilling and circulating the water to the other side of the sink with a vinyl tube siphon-style. After 30 minutes I peeked at the wort and a lot of steam went out when I opened the lid. The wort was still very hot and even the submerged sides of the pot were still untouchable. Out of despair I improvised and decided that it would be better to throw the hot wort in the primary plastic fermentor that came with a stick-on thermometer so that I could see the temperature and know when it was ready for yeast. Since I didn't have ice and thought this method would work, I didn't have another option (especially at midnight) but to put the fermentor in the sink and continue the same failed chilling method. Finally, after 3+ hours the stick-on thermometer wouldn't even read it (it goes up to 78ºF only) but I knew that the wort was chilled as good as it could get at probably 85ºF, so I proceeded to the next step.
Being a n00b, I didn't know that when using dry yeast (I used SafeAle 05) you have to reactivate it and hydrate it. I just opened the yeast packet and threw it inside the fermentor. As for aeration, I got it wrong and I thought that throughout the whole brewing process wort/beer contact with air should be avoided to the greatest extent. Anyhow, the airlock started bubbling after about 12 hours and it kept like that during the most of the 1 week primary fermentation process. After that week, it was time for the secondary fermentation.
Again, I got it wrong. I siphoned the beer to my 5 gallon glass carboy for secondary fermentation and made two mistakes. First, I thought it would be a good idea to throw inside the carboy about 2 oz. of regular undissolved cane sugar before filling it with the beer from the primary so that the yeast could "get a boost" for the secondary fermentation process. Second, I believed that this was the time to aerate "so that the yeast could activate again". No air stone or anything but I agitated quite good the glass carboy. Anyway I read here that oxidation becomes a problem just after many months of storage. Before siphoning I took a sample out of curiosity to measure gravity and it was 1.015.
The beer stood in the secondary for three weeks, and a week ago, I underwent the bottling process. No problem there but for the fact that I also used regular cane sugar for priming (this time dissolved and as suggested by Palmer) because I couldn't find corn sugar and my LHBS was out of it. That's when I tasted the beer and even when I know it needs some weeks in the bottles, I was really disappointed. Like if that were enough, I don't know how it happened or even if it's possible, but gravity measurement came up higher at 1.021. Anyhow two thing must be considered for the higher gravity, one is the sugar addition in the secondary fermentor and that I used a different hydrometer because the first one fell to the floor and broke. I also took yeast from the slurry and tried to make a starter to see if yeast was still alive but got no results.
One last but probably the most important fact is temperature. Even on winter, temperature in Puerto Rico is around 80ºF in most areas. Inside my house I only use the air conditioner during the night to save on the energy bill but anyhow, my wife won't let me sleep with my beer (haha!), so the beer was fermented (covered with a box to keep it dark) on the living room behind a couch that is placed in front of a wall. The stick-on thermometer never gave me a reading but I can only guess that all 4 weeks of the fermentation process went no less than 80ºF but no more than 90ºF, anyway none are good and most probably the mean temperature must have been on the upper 80's.
Today, even when it has only one week in the bottle, I opened a Grolsh bottle that I filled with the last beer remaining in the bottling bucket and there are no signs of even the most minimal improvement. Only that bottle was placed directly in the fridge but I don't know if that's good or not. The other bottles are regular crown cap amber bottles. I opened the Grolsh one while writing so I could describe better the taste, and I also wanted to know if there was at least some minimal trace of carbonation but I also got absolutely none. The bottle didn't even make a sound when opened.
Well that's about it. It is a long post but I wanted to give the most details to see if most of you who obviously have more brewing experience than, me can tell me what went wrong and if I can still have some hope on this turning good or at least drinkable at some point. If not, could there be a way to fix it or should I just dump it? Thanks in advance for the answers and for the help. I have quite a busy schedule so I won't be able to check too often the thread but if someone needs to ask something that is not clear, I'll answer as soon as possible.
