What can I do with watery beer?

[mbockbra]

I tried to do a Beamish clone as my first AG brew. I've gone back and reread all my HB books and know what I did wrong. I have 2 cases of tasty, but very watery Irish stout taking up space (and bottles). Any suggestion for what to do with it? Can I work it into another beer? I could always cook with it. Any recipe ideas?
-Matt

 

[Thehopguy]

whatd u do wrong if u dont mind me asking. ill be moving to all grain and dont wanna make the same mistakes

 

[LVBen]

Umm... here's an idea... drink it!!!!

 

[NorthRiverS]

Brew up another stouter brew and when its ready to drink, pull out two glasses, fill one glass half way, then pour the rest into the second glass. Repeat with the second brew. Two good glasses of beer.

NRS

 

[jonmohno]

did you mash high enough.session stout-Brew more. let them sit and drink them ocassionally for a long time. Thats what im doing with my first watery stout.
You could also try a black and tan if you like those. Ive been looking for a beamish all year and never have luck.

 

[944play]

It might get better with age. Green beer can often seem thin, sour, or bitter and then totally turn around in the space of a month or two.

 

[jigidyjim]

One of my stouts came out too watery. I used it in several different recipes. Search for guiness cooking recipes, you'll find a ton. I made a cake that people LOVED.

My oktoberfest (lagering now) came out watery due to a really weird brew session where water didn't evaporate nearly as much as normal (humid day), leaving me with 5.5 gal instead of 5 gal. I'm not sure how I should have adjusted... if i had boiled it more, the hop additions would have been all wacky. Maybe I should have dumped in some dME at the end.

 

[bniesen]

drink really fast while the next batch is fermenting!

 

[FastAndy]

Man i love Beamish. I cant get it out here, care to send a brotha a bottle? For research and educational purposes only of course.

 

[mbockbra]

In reply to TheHopGuy, my first error was the crush wasn't fine enough. I have a little bit of left over grain that was milled at my local HB shop and there are lots of whole grains and very little flour. My next mistake was that I didn't sparge. I thought that I had gotten a sweet enough wort, but apparently not good enough. With boil down and brewhouse inefficiency, I ended up about 1 - 2 gallons short, so i topped off with good quality bottled water. Finally, and probably most importantly, I didn't use a hydrometer. It was a good learning experience though. I think I needed to jump in with both feet so that I could understand the process better than just reading about it.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Market it as the King of Ales.

 

[Bensiff]

Here's my biggest tip to new brewers, brew by gravity and not recipe or volume. Even when you watch pro's brew, you will see them bust out the refractometer. Its really no big deal if you end up with 3 gallons or 6 gallons as long as you are at your gravity, topping off will only lead to watery beer as you have found. But, good job on jumping in and learning by experience, that's half the curve.

 

[cincybrewer]

Here's my biggest tip to new brewers, brew by gravity and not recipe or volume. Even when you watch pro's brew, you will see them bust out the refractometer. Its really no big deal if you end up with 3 gallons or 6 gallons as long as you are at your gravity, topping off will only lead to watery beer as you have found. But, good job on jumping in and learning by experience, that's half the curve.

So let's say you do a full boil and you are off on your gravity estimate. I would assume if you are too high you can add water at the end. If you are too low, do you just boil off more water? Then your hop utilization gets out of whack, right?

 

[Zixxer10R]

did you mash high enough.session stout-Brew more. let them sit and drink them ocassionally for a long time. Thats what im doing with my first watery stout.
You could also try a black and tan if you like those. Ive been looking for a beamish all year and never have luck.

You'll never find Beamish in the states, it isn't imported from Ireland any longer. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

 

[FastAndy]

You'll never find Beamish in the states, it isn't imported from Ireland any longer. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

I didnt know that. It makes sense, i havent seen it in years. Sad, sad day.

 

[Bensiff]

So let's say you do a full boil and you are off on your gravity estimate. I would assume if you are too high you can add water at the end. If you are too low, do you just boil off more water? Then your hop utilization gets out of whack, right?

Yes, no worries about watering down. When you have collected all your wort you can take a gravity reading. Multiply this gravity by how many gallons you have collected and this will give you how many points you have. Divide this by your expected ending volume to get an idea of your final gravity.

ie

1.030 x 7 gallons = 210 points (ignoring decimal obviously)

210/5 = 1.042 final gravity

Say you wanted to have a FG of 1.050, so divide gravity into your points to find out how many gallons you need to finish with to have the proper gravity.

210/50 = 4.2 gallons

From there you know at the beginning of your boil that you are looking at finishing with 4.2 gallons. If you know your boil off rate you can then predict at what point in the boil you need to add your first additions of hops and begin the countdown to flameout.

 

[cincybrewer]

Okay, gotcha, thanks. Sounds like you're more referring to the planning side, not necessarily after the fact. My issue is I still don't have a strong grapple on my boil off because it depends so heavily on the weather and how strong my flame is. I also need to figure a better way to measure my wort while it's boiling so I can increase or decrease the boil.

 

[Bensiff]

Okay, gotcha, thanks. Sounds like you're more referring to the planning side, not necessarily after the fact. My issue is I still don't have a strong grapple on my boil off because it depends so heavily on the weather and how strong my flame is. I also need to figure a better way to measure my wort while it's boiling so I can increase or decrease the boil.

Yeah, that's the fun part of learning your system. Installing a sight glass will help with volumes, until then you can cheap out and put marks on the inside of your kettle to see where you are at or use something like a marked weighted string to toss over the kettle side to see where you are at.

You do have plenty of play while boiling. Say you have your 60 minute hop additions in and don't plan on any more until 20 or 30 minutes and you realize you aren't boiling off as fast as you predicted...go ahead and boil it down some more and turn your 60 minute into 75 or 90 minute additions as the increase in boil time on those ones won't really impact the final product. Or if you are boiling off too fast you can throttle down the boil to not overshoot.

 

[Justibone]

My issue is I still don't have a strong grapple on my boil off because it depends so heavily on the weather and how strong my flame is.

A fan directed at the boil surface can help prevent boilovers, but it also circulates air in such a way that it increases boiloff. If you're talking about 100% humidity, it might not help much, but it has been known to help the odd brewer get the concentration of wort right in the right amount of time.

Also; if your gravity is too low, adding DME within the last 10 minutes of the boil is totally within bounds. It may change the flavor, etc., but so would extra boil time or wateriness.

 

[brian74]

Package it and market it as an AB product!

 

[bourgeoisbee]

You'll dial in your system over time and get to the point where it's second nature. Then you'll make a change, i.e. bigger brew kettle, and have to redial it in again - although it's easier once you're only making one change at a time vs. getting the whole process down. Taking very thorough notes of temp, volume, gravity, etc at each step, especially in beginning helps you see where you could have corrected on the spot/prevented it next time. Plus you'll learn to eyeball things within a reasonable accuracy to prevent issues later because you know what a wort of such and such quality/quantity looks like.

You can also try boiling with water once now and measure volumes if you want to try to get a better feel for it and get rough boil rates down. You'll spend a couple bucks on the propane to do it, but it could save you money in the long run to dial closer without spending money on ingredients for a so-so batch of beer.

 

[grainstoglass]

First thing that comes to mind is running it through a still...

 

[bourgeoisbee]

That might be the best advice yet! LOL!

 

[cincybrewer]

great info...thanks guys.