RichardJay
Member
Hello
First post here, first home brew (extract).
And I am not really freaking out.
I just racked to secondary today, 7 days after boil, and tasted my beer for the first time and it was not terribly good. I realize it's not meant to be ready for prime time but I wanted to get the thoughts of some people here about what I may be able to expect over the next couple of weeks, have any face-palm-inducing errors pointed out. Also, I hope just writing this down helps me later on down the line. If this is (understandably) firmly in "Too long didn't read" territory, feel free to jump to "the taste test"
My kit:
I used the Austin Homebrew Supply Co.'s AHS Gold Seal Blonde Ale (6B)
[1 lb DME, 5 lb LME, some maltodextrin, and 1 oz hops at 60 min., Dry Nottingham yeast]
This may have been a mistake for me, as I would normally go for hoppier or darker malty beer and based my first brew choice on "most likely to convince wife to not kibosh second brew"
Boil day:
The boil went well, though I did have the cover on partially to help my stove keep a slightly more aggressive boil; I now understand this to be a mistake as it does not allow some compounds to escape. The recipe called for only 3-3.5 gallons be boiled, with water added to the fermenter (ye lode plastic bucket to bring the volume up to 5.25 gallons. I put this extra water in first and shook it up quite a bit while the beer was cooling to the prescribed temp. I rehydrated the yeast (no sugars of any kind added) about 30 minutes or so before adding the beer, at the prescribed temp. once everything was in the fermenter, I gave it a fair bit of angry stirring.
My one main problem on the day was with my hydrometer; if I put it into the thief first (as per the instructions I had) and then filled from the bottom, it remained stuck there. So instead I filled the thief up partially and then slid the hydrometer in (I tried it with water first and got 1.00 so I hope it works). I hit the target gravity (1.054).
When all was said and done, I put it off in the garage fridge with an analog temp controller set to 68F (Danstar's site says the yeast is good from 57-70).
Week1:
My airlock was bubbling away 8-10 hours later and stayed that way for about 72 hours, then it stopped. After browsing this forum, I came across the sage advice "The airlock is for being an airlock, not for gauging fermentation" so I left it alone until today (7 days from brew day). I did notice from a separate thermometer that the fridge was fluctuating more than I would like and was colder than I had set (61-66F still well within the range of the yeast; also, I bought the temp controller from a LHBS, not Austin Homebrew). I was planning to rack today but I checked the Gravity just to make sure, and it was 1.012 (target was 1.013) so I went ahead with it.
The taste test (7 days from boil, upon racking to secondary glass carboy):
I used the thief to get be a small glass and here's where the little gremlin who doesn't want me to just relax crept in. My beer is quite cloudy (even discounting the extra extra cloudiness I got because I pushed the thief right into the 1/4 inch of delicious goo at the bottom of my bucket-lesson learned) and it smells overly fruity and malty sweet (like super Schlitz instead of beer). It tastes fruity, definitely the banana taste plus maybe a bit of tang like a citrus fruit, but not astringent- I am almost wondering if the tang is just my mind playing tricks on me since it is clearly sweet but has no carbonation or the amount of bitterness I would normally expect in something I was drinking. The beer doesn't have any of what I would consider "green" flavors like grass or herbs. Most disappointingly,almost all flavor leaves the mouth nearly instantly. I guess I would most closely equate it to heavily watered down wine, but without the tannin. It isn't terrible, I am still drinking it in many overly-contemplative small sips at the expense of my Sierra Nevada that sits next to it, but it isn't good beer by a long shot.
My basic question is: what might I expect the beer to do over the next 2 weeks in the carboy and 3+ weeks in the bottle? what flavors are here to stay? what will improve (less fruit, more staying power, will bitterness ever come to the party)? I am not considering dumping anything and am not overly concerned, just trying to get some thoughts and to stay involved during the "place in carboy, leave carboy alone" stage of the process. Thanks for your time.
First post here, first home brew (extract).
And I am not really freaking out.
I just racked to secondary today, 7 days after boil, and tasted my beer for the first time and it was not terribly good. I realize it's not meant to be ready for prime time but I wanted to get the thoughts of some people here about what I may be able to expect over the next couple of weeks, have any face-palm-inducing errors pointed out. Also, I hope just writing this down helps me later on down the line. If this is (understandably) firmly in "Too long didn't read" territory, feel free to jump to "the taste test"
My kit:
I used the Austin Homebrew Supply Co.'s AHS Gold Seal Blonde Ale (6B)
[1 lb DME, 5 lb LME, some maltodextrin, and 1 oz hops at 60 min., Dry Nottingham yeast]
This may have been a mistake for me, as I would normally go for hoppier or darker malty beer and based my first brew choice on "most likely to convince wife to not kibosh second brew"
Boil day:
The boil went well, though I did have the cover on partially to help my stove keep a slightly more aggressive boil; I now understand this to be a mistake as it does not allow some compounds to escape. The recipe called for only 3-3.5 gallons be boiled, with water added to the fermenter (ye lode plastic bucket to bring the volume up to 5.25 gallons. I put this extra water in first and shook it up quite a bit while the beer was cooling to the prescribed temp. I rehydrated the yeast (no sugars of any kind added) about 30 minutes or so before adding the beer, at the prescribed temp. once everything was in the fermenter, I gave it a fair bit of angry stirring.
My one main problem on the day was with my hydrometer; if I put it into the thief first (as per the instructions I had) and then filled from the bottom, it remained stuck there. So instead I filled the thief up partially and then slid the hydrometer in (I tried it with water first and got 1.00 so I hope it works). I hit the target gravity (1.054).
When all was said and done, I put it off in the garage fridge with an analog temp controller set to 68F (Danstar's site says the yeast is good from 57-70).
Week1:
My airlock was bubbling away 8-10 hours later and stayed that way for about 72 hours, then it stopped. After browsing this forum, I came across the sage advice "The airlock is for being an airlock, not for gauging fermentation" so I left it alone until today (7 days from brew day). I did notice from a separate thermometer that the fridge was fluctuating more than I would like and was colder than I had set (61-66F still well within the range of the yeast; also, I bought the temp controller from a LHBS, not Austin Homebrew). I was planning to rack today but I checked the Gravity just to make sure, and it was 1.012 (target was 1.013) so I went ahead with it.
The taste test (7 days from boil, upon racking to secondary glass carboy):
I used the thief to get be a small glass and here's where the little gremlin who doesn't want me to just relax crept in. My beer is quite cloudy (even discounting the extra extra cloudiness I got because I pushed the thief right into the 1/4 inch of delicious goo at the bottom of my bucket-lesson learned) and it smells overly fruity and malty sweet (like super Schlitz instead of beer). It tastes fruity, definitely the banana taste plus maybe a bit of tang like a citrus fruit, but not astringent- I am almost wondering if the tang is just my mind playing tricks on me since it is clearly sweet but has no carbonation or the amount of bitterness I would normally expect in something I was drinking. The beer doesn't have any of what I would consider "green" flavors like grass or herbs. Most disappointingly,almost all flavor leaves the mouth nearly instantly. I guess I would most closely equate it to heavily watered down wine, but without the tannin. It isn't terrible, I am still drinking it in many overly-contemplative small sips at the expense of my Sierra Nevada that sits next to it, but it isn't good beer by a long shot.
My basic question is: what might I expect the beer to do over the next 2 weeks in the carboy and 3+ weeks in the bottle? what flavors are here to stay? what will improve (less fruit, more staying power, will bitterness ever come to the party)? I am not considering dumping anything and am not overly concerned, just trying to get some thoughts and to stay involved during the "place in carboy, leave carboy alone" stage of the process. Thanks for your time.
