First Brew day notes and questions

[bluehende]

So Tuesday was my first brew day by myself. I had helped my son a couple times, but was never the boss. I designed my own recipe using extract and specialty grains hoping to do a nice dry stout for my non craft brew friends that would be nice and sessionable for me.

I boiled some water in one pan to have available if needed. I then set up my specialty grain steeping pot and my brew kettle. 2 1/2 gallons of starsan was put in a wash tub to sanitize everything that touches the wort.

specialty grains

0.5 lb of chocolate wheat
0.67 of northern brewers nocturnal blend (270 L)
0.25 lbs of Bries Carapils
0.25 lbs of Bries caramel (10 L)

I steeped these grains in a grain bag for 30 minutes at 150 degrees in 3 quarts of water. The temperature control kept me between 147 to 151 making sure I was constantly moving the bag anytime the heat was on. I moved the temp to 165 degrees in 3 minutes and held there for 30 more minutes. Temperatures were again kept plus or minus 2 degrees. I then dipped the grain bag about 20 times into the brew kettle that was at 170 degrees. Boy it was black. The estimated SRM is 36, and I believe it is even darker than that. I then added the steeped grain water into the brew kettle and added....

6 lbs of dark LME
0.5 lbs of sparling amber DME

This brought the volume way up to probably close to 4 gallons at 154 degrees. It took quite a while to get to boiling stirring very often and a lot at about boiling. I boiled for 60 minutes with the following additions

0.5 oz of columbus hops AA 17.2 at 60 minutes
0.5 oz of cascade hops AA 7.2 at 30 minutes
0.25 oz columbus at 30 minutes
0.25 oz of cascade at 0 minutes

3/4 teaspoon irish moss at 15 minutes.
1/2 gram of Nutriferm at 5 minutes

The wort was chilled from boiling to 80 degrees in 30 minutes by placing kettle in an ice water bath.

I placed this into a pale ale bucket with some splashing. Every couple gallons I used a colander in the bucket that was moved up and down vigorously with tongs to aerate. Water made up to approximately 5.1 gallons with tap water bringing the temperature to 68 degrees. Another go with the colander and then some shaking.

Yeast

The yeast was Nottingham that was cultured back up by a 3 step starter ending in 2 500 ml starters (no mason jar big enough for 1 liter). These were cold crashed for 24 hrs. I was a little worried about selecting for high flocculating yeast so I poured half off the pellet and pitched all of the other 500 mls. I actually tasted a bit of the beer from the starter. Think sweet bread. Seemed real nice and could actually have been carbed for a beer.

Bubbles started in the fermentation lock within 3 hrs. I set up a blow off and saw no bubbles for the next 16 hrs. Being new of course I was panicking. I opened the fermenter and saw a nice healthy krausen. I left the blowoff on for another day then set back up the fermentation lock and watched beautiful bubbles every few seconds. The reason for nothing out of the blow off was probably the head pressure of a 2 liter bottle of starsan that I put the tube in. I am sure that the co2 was escaping from the lid seal.


The original gravity was measured at 1.054 with a hydrometer that I have now determined to be about 0.003 points high (water at 1.003 or as close to that as my old eyes can read with the cheap hydrometer). At about 5 days at 59 degrees ambient the bubbling had stopped completely, but the airlock still smells beautifully of hops. At 6 days I checked the SG and it is at 1.020.

The plan is to keep it on the cake in primary for about 3 weeks hoping to get it to 1.011 (the top for a dry stout). I would prime a bit high to get more carbonation for a refreshing brew. If it finishes sweet I will carb a bit less.

Now for the multitude of questions.

How do the experts think the recipe will come out? I may have over hopped. Being a new brewer I smelled no hops right at 1/2 hr (well duhhhh) and weighed out another 1/4 ounce of cascade. Since I had it weighed I threw it in. The original recipe was for 5.5 gallons final. I was paranoid about leaving the fermentor open so finished with less volume. I really have no way of knowing precisely.

Did I overhop with a predicted IBU of 38?

Did the two step steeping do anything? Since I had no idea what was in the nocturnal blend (probably not smart for a first recipe but it sounded good) I figured I may actually convert some fermentable sugars out of the grains. Anybody have any idea what I actually did?

I opened the fermenter at 6 days to check to see if it might be possible to use the yeast cake for my next brew. My son will be visiting this weekend and wants to brew with me. Quality time with the kids is priceless. My plan was to brew the same day I bottled at 3 weeks. We will now be brewing at day 11. My gut is to just buy another pack of yeast. Having said that could I secondary this beer to use the yeast cake for a bigger brown ale? I also kept a small part of starter from this batch and made up a starter for cider. It did smell a little sour so do not plan to use this for a big batch of beer.

What yeast would you suggest for a brown ale that will use the same ingredients as this brew using more caramel and small amounts of the darker malts?

And lastly.....Why do we worry so darned much?

Any suggestions for the future would be highly appreciated. I am new to this so want to learn. Please criticize the recipe or techniques.

Thanks
Wayne

 

[Bramstoker17]

I think your recipe looks like it will turn out nicely. My only suggestion would be to use all light extract, and then control you color and flavors using specialty grains. You'll have more control over your finished beer this way since you don't really know what grains they used in the dark extract.

I don't think it'll be too hoppy, but I do enjoy hops quite a bit. It may be on the higher end for an easier drinking stout, but it should still turn out well.

As for the way you steeped, you did a more involved process than you probably really needed too, but that will prepare you for doing partial mashes/all grain. When I did extract, I usually just got the water to around 155 and let the grains steep for 30 min. You aren't trying to convert starches to sugars here, so the temp being constant isn't really important. Again, what you did was good, and will prepare you for using base grains. You probably did not get much, if any, fermentable sugars from the grains themselves, as they lack the ability to converts their starches to sugar. You need to steep base malts with them to do that, and that is mashing. With the control you had over your steeping process, you could easily replace a bit of your extract with a pound or two of 2 Row and do a partial mash, but wait till you feel comfortable enough to do that.

As for reusing a yeast cake, I can't help you there as I've never done it.

All in all it seems like you have a very well controlled process and I think you'll have a very good beer to show for it!

 

[bluehende]

Thank you for the input.

I know what you mean by color control. Since this was my first recipe I was going for dark. Boy did I get it. My starters are made with light dme and the resulting liquor off the top is pretty dark to begin with. I had not considered flavors from the malt extract, but obviously if it is dark they added something. That purchase was a mistake, however the description of toffee and caramel had me drooling. I couldn't stop my finger from hitting "add to cart". My next brew is a fairly light brown ale. I will see how this comes out for color. My guess is I will start using the lightest extracts and even late additions to keep the color light.