Help with a low gravity beer and honey

[Texasbrowncoat]

I brewed a 3gal pale ale today, all grain, and after the mash of 2 gals beersmith told me to fly sparge with 3 gals. After doing that and finishing my total boil my beer ended up with a OG of 1.010. I didn't have any beet sugar so I used honey. It hasn't even been 12 hours and my airlocks are bubbly like crazy. Has anyone else experienced something like this? As I'm sure you can tell, yes I am a new Brewer.

 

[MVKTR2]

We've all been there! Trying to find out what went wrong...

Either you entered some volumes wrong into the recipe calculator, miscalculated the amount of water you were using/miscalculated amount of grain needed, or conversion wasn't finished.

What did your final volume wind up being? This would tend to eliminate volume:recipe issues. You had 3 gals at the end of the boil?

My guess is something was wrong with your mash, as in the carbohydrates weren't fully converted to sugars.

Post the full recipe including volumes of water & how much yeast you pitched, etc. for better feedback.

Fwiw it is not surprising the ferementation took off so quickly if you pitched a full amount of yeast as it had a lessened need to multiply to build up numbers for fermentation. This is nothing to worry about.

Additionally and you won't know this till the beer is served, if there is lots of chill haze it points to the mash being incomplete as it left lots of complex carbs & proteins unconverted.

 

[bobeer]

Honey is pretty much 100% fermentable so that's why your airlock is bubbling away. It's very simple sugar and the yeast eat it right up.

With that said see if you can get some malt extract to beef up the beer a little bit. An OG of 1.010 and adding honey to it you will have a very light beer malt wise. Don't dump it though. Ride it out and see the beer through. Get on to your next batch and get the pipeline going!

 

[Texasbrowncoat]

I planned on sticking it out to see how it turns out. The wort tasted like hoppy water.

Pale ale 2 row 4 lbs.
Crystal 20L 1.5 lbs

Galaxy .3 oz 60min
Aurora .3 oz 15min
Saaz .5 oz 5min

California ale 001 made with a starter. I used one full package in the starter and divided the starter over four containers (3, 1 gal jugs, 1 mason jar) 5 oz of yeast in each container.

Mashed at 180 degrees for 60 mins with 2 gals of water and ended up with 1.25 (Give or take) and fly sprage 3 gals at 170 degrees. Then boiled at 190 degrees and added the hops ending with a final volume of 3 gals. Fearing the worst I decided "screw it, I'll add some honey." I decided not to measure the honey because I was worried more about the taste than anything.

I would say I added maybe 2 oz of honey in each fermenter. And as a side note one of the gal jugs I aided a couple of rosemary sprigs.

 

[bobeer]

I planned on sticking it out to see how it turns out. The wort tasted like hoppy water.

Pale ale 2 row 4 lbs.
Crystal 20L 1.5 lbs

Galaxy .3 oz 60min
Aurora .3 oz 15min
Saaz .5 oz 5min

California ale 001 made with a starter. I used one full package in the starter and divided the starter over four containers (3, 1 gal jugs, 1 mason jar) 5 oz of yeast in each container.

Mashed at 180 degrees for 60 mins with 2 gals of water and ended up with 1.25 (Give or take) and fly sprage 3 gals at 170 degrees. Then boiled at 190 degrees and added the hops ending with a final volume of 3 gals. Fearing the worst I decided "screw it, I'll add some honey." I decided not to measure the honey because I was worried more about the taste than anything.

I would say I added maybe 2 oz of honey in each fermenter. And as a side note one of the gal jugs I aided a couple of rosemary sprigs.

If your mash temp was 180 after you added the grains then that's probably where you went wrong. 180 is way too hot to mash. The enzymes that convert the starches to sugar never had a chance to get going because they were killed due to the high heat. You typically want your mash to be between 148-156 or so but it really depends on what you're brewing and what you want the final beer to be like. Usually the lower you mash the more dry and fermentable your beer will end up. The higher your mash the less fermentable your wort will be meaning the yeast will have a harder time eating those more complex sugars and your beer in the end will be maltier and sweeter. Do some reading about mash temps and stuff to make more sense out of it.

 

[Texasbrowncoat]

I use beersmith for developing the recipes and realized that in mash section I did not have it adjust for making a temperature mash. Once I adjusted that then it shows to mash at 150-160.

 

[bobeer]

I use beersmith for developing the recipes and realized that in mash section I did not have it adjust for making a temperature mash. Once I adjusted that then it shows to mash at 150-160.

So what was the temp of the mash water (aka strike temp) before you added the grain?