sancupanza
Member
Ok, here’s an amusing story about my first batch..
Don’t know where the idea came from but I decided to go for a REAL whole grain (plus some sugar) batch and bought 10kg of unmalted barley.
Malted the barley (drying and kilning part most difficult) and crashed it with a food processor.
Anyway, mashed and boiled it with some real hops (whole plants, not pressed hops).
The problem was I did all this during summer without any cooling equipment. Tried to cool the wort with some ice water overnight and pitched the yeast in the morning at a temp of 24 C.
Fermentation stated like a bomb and the temp suddenly increased to almost 30 deg C or higher.
It took 24 h for most of the fermentation to finish. After a week, taking a hydrometer reading it showed 1020 but no more bubbles, so I decided to pitch more yeast..
A week later still at 1020 so more yeast, this time turbo yeast
Later figured out that I was reading my hydrometer totally wrong - the bottom of the hydrometer was already touching the bottom of the flask, not possible to o down any further
Anyway, observed some white clumps which looked like white mold, so decided to add some metabilsulfites obtained from a winery nearby.
Bottled the beer with sugar priming the next day and kept a plastic control bottle to check carbonation.
Waited days and weeks but it didn’t carbonate! Damn metabilsulfites
After a month, decided to crack open the bottles, collected everything back in the fermenter, it was very sour due to some added sour plum juice before fermentation (no idea why I did this), so added some bicarbonates to balance the acidity, waited few more days, sugar primed again and bottled.
And voilà!
It carbonated pretty well this time!
After a month of bottle conditioning, opened a bottle and tasted.
The taste was not bad, pretty good actually with full of fruity esters, some off flavors but not disturbing, good carbonation, lots of yeast flavor, a bit sour, and pretty drinkable. Actually much better (for my taste) than any light lager commercially sold.
So at the end, didn’t have to throw away 5 gallon batch and actually enjoyed it.
I guess the ABV was above 9% and a litre of it was enough to make me feel good, with some rash on my face and dry sculp (due to a lot of fusels I guess).
What a disaster but a great learning experience!
Don’t know where the idea came from but I decided to go for a REAL whole grain (plus some sugar) batch and bought 10kg of unmalted barley.
Malted the barley (drying and kilning part most difficult) and crashed it with a food processor.
Anyway, mashed and boiled it with some real hops (whole plants, not pressed hops).
The problem was I did all this during summer without any cooling equipment. Tried to cool the wort with some ice water overnight and pitched the yeast in the morning at a temp of 24 C.
Fermentation stated like a bomb and the temp suddenly increased to almost 30 deg C or higher.
It took 24 h for most of the fermentation to finish. After a week, taking a hydrometer reading it showed 1020 but no more bubbles, so I decided to pitch more yeast..
A week later still at 1020 so more yeast, this time turbo yeast
Later figured out that I was reading my hydrometer totally wrong - the bottom of the hydrometer was already touching the bottom of the flask, not possible to o down any further
Anyway, observed some white clumps which looked like white mold, so decided to add some metabilsulfites obtained from a winery nearby.
Bottled the beer with sugar priming the next day and kept a plastic control bottle to check carbonation.
Waited days and weeks but it didn’t carbonate! Damn metabilsulfites
After a month, decided to crack open the bottles, collected everything back in the fermenter, it was very sour due to some added sour plum juice before fermentation (no idea why I did this), so added some bicarbonates to balance the acidity, waited few more days, sugar primed again and bottled.
And voilà!
It carbonated pretty well this time!
After a month of bottle conditioning, opened a bottle and tasted.
The taste was not bad, pretty good actually with full of fruity esters, some off flavors but not disturbing, good carbonation, lots of yeast flavor, a bit sour, and pretty drinkable. Actually much better (for my taste) than any light lager commercially sold.
So at the end, didn’t have to throw away 5 gallon batch and actually enjoyed it.
I guess the ABV was above 9% and a litre of it was enough to make me feel good, with some rash on my face and dry sculp (due to a lot of fusels I guess).
What a disaster but a great learning experience!
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