theshifty
New Member
Hello All,
I'm a new brewer and have lurked these forums for about a month and have learned alot. Thank you all for sharing your knowledge.
For the record, I got into home brewing because the wife bought me a Mr Beer for Valentine's Day. It was very average, so I found a recipe for an all grain brew, found a local home brew shop, and went to buy my ingredients.
What I attempted to make was a light fruit beer infused with lemon. My wife likes Leininkugel's Summer Shandy and it was the inspiraton for the brew. So I found a fruit beer recipe here and modified it for a lemon finish.
Anyhow, not fully understanding the whole grain brewing process, I steeped and sparged my grains with the hops included. I also put the lemon rind that I boiled to steralize into the fermenter (at this point I only have a Mr Beer to use as a fermenter, I was laid off about a month ago and won't be buying any new equipment until I can find work) and let my Nottingham yeast work its magic.
I am sitting here drinking one of those beers right now and it is quite refreshing. My question (finally!) is without doing a full boil, did any of the alpha acids make it into my brew? (did I waste some hop pellets?) I really cannot taste them with the lemon in the beer. If I make this beer again (I will, the wife loves it) would boiling the hops add a great deal more bitterness to the wort vs what I did do? Does not boiling the wort cause any problems I should be aware of?
I'm a new brewer and have lurked these forums for about a month and have learned alot. Thank you all for sharing your knowledge.
For the record, I got into home brewing because the wife bought me a Mr Beer for Valentine's Day. It was very average, so I found a recipe for an all grain brew, found a local home brew shop, and went to buy my ingredients.
What I attempted to make was a light fruit beer infused with lemon. My wife likes Leininkugel's Summer Shandy and it was the inspiraton for the brew. So I found a fruit beer recipe here and modified it for a lemon finish.
Anyhow, not fully understanding the whole grain brewing process, I steeped and sparged my grains with the hops included. I also put the lemon rind that I boiled to steralize into the fermenter (at this point I only have a Mr Beer to use as a fermenter, I was laid off about a month ago and won't be buying any new equipment until I can find work) and let my Nottingham yeast work its magic.
I am sitting here drinking one of those beers right now and it is quite refreshing. My question (finally!) is without doing a full boil, did any of the alpha acids make it into my brew? (did I waste some hop pellets?) I really cannot taste them with the lemon in the beer. If I make this beer again (I will, the wife loves it) would boiling the hops add a great deal more bitterness to the wort vs what I did do? Does not boiling the wort cause any problems I should be aware of?
