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Would 2-2-2 be 2 weeks fermenting, 2 bottle conditioning, 2 cold lagering?

And I'm not thinking my experiment would really have desirable results so much. I'm interested in tasting the bad results and having a concrete example of how they're improved by time.

 

You got it! Though in my case, I haven't gone out to buy my fridge and temperature control, so true lagering isn't possible, I simply leave them in my basement at 62 degrees. (Lagering is meant to be done between 33-40 degrees, just above freezing so the majority of the yeast drops out of suspension and effectively clears the beer up.)

 

All my undesirable results have lead me to the conclusions:
1. Ferment as low as you can with the strain of yeast you have to avoid cidery off flavors
2. Pitch yeast at correct temperature
3. Always have sanitizer onhand and be vigilant in your practices.
4. Patience heals most ales.
5. Read "the complete joy of home brewing" by Charlie Ppapazian cover to cover. Several times.

 

Your first batch is an experiment already! My suggestion is not to change things up too drastically with your first batch. How will you know if you like it the way it is intended to be made if you never make it that way? Just my two cents. But, the answer to your question...the beer that spends the most time in the fermenter and the most time bottle conditioning will taste better as a general rule of thumb. Good luck with your beer making and whether you choose to do your experiment or not, you'll still be making beer! Let us know how it turns out!

 

I've read "Papa" Papazian's book cover-to-cover, and even he would agree, some of the warnings and techniques no longer apply... so know what to keep and what to leave. The stuff about designing recipes and whatnot, accounting for increased access to ingredients these days, is still excellent information.

Palmer's book is more up-to-date, IMO.

 

So I decided to do a 3 gal batch of Edwort's Apfelwein in my Mr. Beer, and I want it to come out well, so I guess that means it's going to be in there for a long time. My first two beers, though, are really starting to come into their own and to taste quite good. It's been 2 weeks since I pitched the Apfelwein now, and I want to make more beer!

I guess I just have to head down to my LHBS and pick myself up some buckets!

I had better not run this one by the SWMBO... easier to ask forgiveness than permission

 

Done.

273 pages containing 2726 posts of wisdom.

Thank you all, thank you so much. I have gone from hobby, to addiction to obsession inn just under four months and seven 2.13 gallon batches of beer. I am trying all kinds of new things and only scratched the surface. This is going to be great! (that is if SWMBO doesn't get too annoyed or cut off the funds...) I'd better start a weekly flower buying ritual...

 

Congrats on the finishing the thread!

The true way to appease SWMBO is to surprise her with sincerity. Flowers are great as a surprise, but if she *knows* they are coming, they fail to impress.

If possible, buy her some grocery store flowers for a couple weeks until she starts to expect them - then get her the really expensive ones delivered to surprise her. Or, pick them up at a florist and surprise her by taking her to a restaurant she really likes for lunch.

Most SWMBOs appreciate effort and sincerity more than money spent.

(My SWMBO lets me brew [almost] as often as I want, and *insists* that I go to brew sessions with my buddies.)

 

Alright, now a quick question.

I have a Beta Prince APA that I brewed a week ago.

Beta Prince
-----------
Brewer: Swenocha
Style: APA
Batch: 2.40 gal

Characteristics
---------------
Recipe Gravity: 1.062 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 66 IBU
Recipe Color: 14° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.015
Alcohol by Volume: 6.0%
Alcohol by Weight: 4.7%

Ingredients
-----------
Crystal 60L 0.75 lb, Grain, Steeped
Muntons DME - Amber 1.00 lb, Extract, Extract
Muntons DME - Extra Light 2.00 lb, Extract, Extract

Centennial 0.50 oz, Pellet, 60 minutes
Warrior 0.20 oz, Pellet, 30 minutes
Cascade 0.50 oz, Pellet, 15 minutes
Centennial 0.55 oz, Pellet, 5 minutes
Centennial 0.40 oz, Pellet, 0 minutes
Columbus 0.40 oz, Pellet, 0 minutes

I just racked it from my MRB to a homemade secondary (2 Gal Slimline water cooler with airlock) and dry hopped last night. I was expecting some activity but this morning I have almost .5-1 inch of krausen again. The slimline is under the sink in a cupboard without light and my temps have been consistent at 68-71F. Do people that use a secondary normally see this much activity? My last batch had almost no activity in the secondary. Not much I can do at this point so after work I'll RDWHAHB but I want to make sure I am learning as I go.

 

I know the feeling! Every time I thought this thread was starting to just repeat itself, I found some new nugget of wisdom and decided to keep reading all the way through. What a marathon

But if you start buying tons of flowers, where will you get the money for more beer ingredients?

Just ask SWMBO what she'd like you to brew next and that should keep her happy. I showed up at home last night with the gear to start doing 5 gal batches. After explaining that I just wanted to brew something she would like, and to have it ready for after she delivers our first child, she actually seemed pretty pleased that I was thinking of her.

 

If the gravity isn't changing, it's not really activity. You dry-hopped - did you use leaf or pellet? If pellet, some of that sediment is likely hops material.

EDIT: You said pellet. F- on my reading comprehension, LOL!

Did you stir it or jostle it before racking? You may have knocked some yeast back into suspension and they just settled overnight. (That's a simplistic answer, and I'm fairly certain that's not what happened, since you've done this before... but covering the simple things helps sometimes.)

 

I used tubing from the auto locking spigot and a bottling wand to guard against oxygen in the beer. I highly doubt this just sediment as it was clear on top to start. The thing that gets me is nearly complete lack of activity in the airlock. I have only seen one bubble. Here is a current picture from today at lunch (15 hours after transfer)

 

if your talking about the krausen on top, thats normal. airlock may not bubble if co2 is leaking about a little somewhere else. thats normal too. i didn't see what your original question was, but what you got going on in the picture looks good.

 

@sigeprudy1901

That is kreusen. It could be from CO2 coming out of solution when you racked, but I don't really know.

You need to check the gravity to know if fermentation has re-started.

I would do that, then post the picture and question in the beginner's forum as its own thread. Sorry!

 

i just read your original question. it seems you may have racked to secondary before fermentation was complete. did you take any gravity readings? counting bubbles and looking at the beer is not an accurate way to see when the beer is finished. if this is what happened its still ok. the reason for dry hopping after fermentation is finished is that active fermentation can strip the hop flavors some. so you may loose a little hop flavor, but everything else should be just fine. lesson to learn (i'm just assuming) is to get a hydrometer (they're cheap). and then you can tell when the beer has reached final gravity, rack at the right time, and not get fermentation in your secondary. don't sweat it. happy brewing!

 

By the way, sigeprudy, I love that the label on the front of that container says to fill it with your favorite beverage. Heck yes!

 

I racked to secondary at 1 week as I did not have a hydrometer. It is still active at 10 days past my brew day and I think it is just fine. It is slow and there is a new, much thinner trub forming. I plan to bottle at 2.5-3 weeks past brew day.

On a separate note, I have purchased a 2.5 gallon slimline and did the same conversion (drilling a 1.125 inch hole in the lid, and fixing a bung/airlock) to be used as a primary fermenter. I just brewed a Hefeweizen variation tonight to test it (why not use a wheat beer to test a fermenter?). It was 2 lbs of wheat DME, 0.5 lbs of Light DME and some Hallertau hops (.5oz @ 40 min, .25 oz @ 10 min and .25 oz dry hop in seven days/transfer to secondary). I also added a tsp of lemon zest at 10 to go in the boil.

What do you guys think about when to (if to) transfer to a secondary and if/when I should add more lemon to give it that citrus flavor I'm looking for in a summer brew?

 

with a hefe you don't really need a secondary to clear, because it's not supposed to be clear.as for the lemon, I would start with that, taste it after fermentation and adjust it then if you think you need to

 

Alright, forgetting about the stuff fermenting and starting to work on formulating my first original recipe. Looking for an IPA with some full flavor. I haven't order the supplies yet so suggestions are welcome. I will be using a Mr. Beer or equivalent sized primary and the following recipe (done on Hopville), what are your thoughts?


malt & fermentables
% LB OZ MALT OR FERMENTABLE PPG °L
44% 2.0 lbs Northern Brewer Pilsen LME 34 2
44% 2.0 lbs Northern Brewer Munich LME 36 8
6% 4 oz Belgian CaraMunich 33 75
6% 4 oz Briess Caramel 60L 34 60

hops
USE TIME OZ VARIETY FORM AA
boil 40 mins 0.5 Warrior pellet 17.2
boil 40 mins 0.5 Chinook pellet 13.0
boil 20 mins 0.5 Centennial pellet 10.0

dry hop 7 days 0.5 Chinook pellet 13.0
dry hop 7 days 0.5 Centennial pellet 10.0


Yeast will be US-05, T-58, or Nottingham's

Original Gravity 1.071
Final Gravity 1.019
Color 14° SRM / 27° EBC (Copper to Red/Lt. Brown)

Bitterness 58.0 IBU

Alcohol 6.9% ABV

 

The munich malt will need to be converted. You can't just steep it. It can convert itself, but you'll need to keep the steeping temps between 148-158 for an hour.

 

Hi, I used this for my first homebrew (I just turned 21) and everything came out okay except the 2nd half of the beer was very yeasty. I probably shouldn't have drank it straight out of the bottle. But still, there was a lot of yeast and I left the bottom part in the homebrew kit. Now I heard you can put gelatin in to get the yeast out. Can I do this to my current brew? It's already been bottled and carbonated. Or do I have to wait until my next one? If it has to be the next one, when and how do I use the gelatin? Any other suggestions to make the beer less yeasty will help. Thank you!

 

Don't know about the gelatin.. Too late now since you already bottled. Yeasty taste is indicative of a beer simply too young for consumption. I won't even speak of infection at this point since you shouldn't worry about that until way later and your beer still has that taste.
The yeasts will drop out of suspension in a few weeks and clear up, especially if kept at basement temps, maybe 60-66. I store mine directly after bottling at 62 for several weeks and they've started to become much much more clear doing that.
Here are my relatively uneducated guesses given what knowledge I have gained at the moment regarding adding flavors:
Adding some lemon and/or lime peel to the secondary would give you some more citrus flavor. I would guesstimate 1 oz. Per 5 gallons. Put them in a hopsack maybe add a stainless steel weight so it sinks to the bottom...
You could also boil the zest of some lemons or the lemon stuff, for perhaps 10 minutes might add some more flavor. I did this with some orange peel with a lager recently but I can't detect too much orange. It might come through eventually since it's only been in the bottle for 2 weeks and still tastes young. My experience has been when adding fruit flavor, ease up on the hops or use something lighter with less alpha acids as the hops tend to dominate subtle flavors like this, and push them back a bit farther than you may want. Hope that helps a little bit. Secondary is where you really want to add your secondary flavorings. Since you are using mrbeer, put double the amount of fruit in as directed. Since it is technically added to primary, fermentation will really eat a lot of those flavors during their processes.
Again, bottle at least two weeks after you brew so the yeast have a chance to clean up and do their thing. Patience is key here, bottle too early and you'll get more yeast in the bottles since it hasn't had a chance to settle out. Since this is your first brew, don't get caught up on adding stuff you don't need. Gelatin won't help if you don't give the time needed to the yeast, the most intrugal component to your beer!

 

Adding lemon zest can kill your (beer) head. It contains oils, which are a no-no.

I use dry lemonade mix that comes in those little foil envelopes at the grocery store. One of those for every 1-2 gallons (to taste) makes a very convincing shandy, and it won't affect the head.

 

Homebrew is almost never consumed from the bottle. It's usually poured, in one smooth motion, into a glass, leaving about the last half inch in the bottle. If it was refrigerated prior to drinking, the yeast cake should be a fairly compact layer along the bottom, and pouring it smoothly and correctly (a matter of practice!) will give you nearly yeast-free beer.

If your beer is carbonated in a bottle, it will always have a yeast layer at the bottom. It comes from adding the bottling sugar. If you don't have a yeast layer in there, you don't have carbonation.

I tried using sorbate one time to get carbonation without a yeast cake. The first time I did it accidentally and it worked; the seconed time I did it on purpose and it gave me FUSEL ALCOHOLS. Ouch. If you ever wondered what it was like to feel like your skull is giving birth, drink some fusel alcohols. Damn. Ouch. It was hell-in-a-bottle.

So, if you don't want yeast at all, you need to switch to kegging. Since that's expensive, and you're just getting into this, you'd be better off with the pour-in-one-motion-leave-a-half-inch-in-the-bottom-of-the-bottle technique.

 

The dark lord is correct - cool temps will cause the yeast to settle. He didn't mention, though, that you should only do this after your beer has already carbonated. Beer carbonates relatively quickly at room temperature or a little above, but it carbonates very slowly at cool temperature, and not at all in the fridge.

Three weeks carbing (minimum), one week in the fridge is a good rule of thumb.

Gelatin is, in my opinion, best for quick-ferment wine kits. Since beer ferments pretty fast anyways, there is rarely a need for gelatin with modern, flocculating yeast strains for homebrew beer. That being said, some people do use it to get as clear a beer as possible. I've thought of using flavored gelatin (Jell-O tm) to make a raspberry American wheat... it would add color, flavor and clarity, a trifecta! I haven't done that yet, though, so I can't recommend it.

Dry hopping with amarillo or citra hops is a good way to add citrus flavors to beer.

 

My fault, the Hopville program didn't have it labeled correctly. It is the Northern Brewer Munich LME not the grain.

 

Just got off the phone with someone from Brewers Best....Im making a Rauchbier, and its now in the lagering stage in my fridge in a glass barboy. He advised to take a reading ...so i did and got 1.020....it should be around 1.013.....then i read where if your brew is not at 60 degrees you subtract .005 for every ten degrees...sonce im lagering at 40 degrees...am i correct in assuming a proper adjustedSG is 1.010? which would make it just right? then ill just wait another 3 weeks and bottle! ..If im wrong...will this stuff continue fermenting at this temp? im confused...and a bit concerned....beer is serious stuff!

 

I used the converter on Beersmith, it says your beer is at 1.019.

 

I think that depends on the HME (hopped malt extract) being used. I've dry-hopped many of these with no ill affects. Like anything else, it's knowing what you're dealing with (which is tough since MrB doesn't list their ingredients or amounts).

 

when i used the pale ale the first time, it came out really sugary. second time not very sugary but a hopbomb. So i've noticed some kits are better than others. Namely the ones that don't rely on the booster. I've since upgraded to 5 gallon batches (which, if you're contemplating the idea, just do it. Don't look back) and now use the MRB fermenter keg for hard cider.

 

I agree that the basic kits are thin and a bit 'cidery' when using just one can and the booster, but using two cans of malt + the booster works out just fine.

I do a wide range of brewing from MrB extract kits, to PM to all grain batches ranging from 2.5 gallons (so I ferment in the MrB kegs) to 5 gallon batches using either carboys or ale pails.

I agree that there's nothing like an AG batch because of the control you have to tailor it to be exactly what you like - but I've made (and will continue to make) some damn fine beer using MrB extracts as well. You can always add DME, LME, hops, steeping grains, etc. to those as well.

In the end it would be easier to tweak them if we knew the ingredients (specifically the hop schedules and amounts) but me thinks they are never going to share that.

 

All you really need to know is the IBUs, but then again, IBUs can be masked by residual sweetness, which depends (partially) on what you do. If you scorch the extract, you convert some sugars to unfermentables, and the beer is sweeter. If you add booster, it helps the yeast break down more sugars, so it is less sweet and the hops are more noticeable. So, in the end, it really does matter what you do.

The same way that different people making mac 'n cheese out of a box at home (I believe Canadians call it a "Kraft dinner"?), can make it taste different, I think Mr. Beer is the same thing. Whereas with the mac 'n cheese it depends on how much butter you use vs. how much milk, or how long you cook the noodles, etc., Mr Beer varies by when you add the extract and whether you prevent scorches, and how much booster you add -- even if that is "none".

So, basically, if you want to get really good at making Mr Beer, just like anything else, you have to do it a lot until you really know what works and what doesn't with your technique and equipment.

But if your beer is too sweet, typically, I'd watch out for scorching and hold off adding all of the extract until the last 5 minutes of the boil. And if it's too hoppy, I'd say don't use the booster and boil all the extract the whole time.

Just my 1/50th of a dollar!

 

started the "Jamiaca Mon" in one of my MB's it called for the Golden Lager UME and an Amber lager (i think) HME it also called for booster, but instead i used brown sugar, not a fan of the booster. lets see how it goes!......

 

I use qBrew to help determine the basic profile of all the Mr. Beer recipes, the ingredient database has the IBU, extract and color values of all their HME and UMEs. This makes it easy to get a feel of what adding honey, booster or brown sugar will do to the basic profile.

Example: Cowboy Golden Lager is 1.036 extract, Color is 6.0 and it's entered as 1.21 pounds on the grain tab and 1 ounce for 5 minutes on the Hops tab.

Once you enter the Mr. Beer HME and UMEs you can then add more DME, mash or steeping grains and then see how many hop additions will be needed to bring the sweetness down again.

 

I'm working my way through this thread, right now I'm on page 66 so I've got a ways to go. If my question has been answered between there and here please forgive me. Here is my question:
I bought a three gallon jug with the idea that I would use that for my first stage, then transfer to the MR. Beer for mixing with the corn sugar and bottling. However, when I got home I realized I had forgotten to check the type of plastic the jug was made out of. Turns out it is a number 3 (Type V) plastic, not a number 1 PET or PETE jug. Could I still use it or is that a bad idea? How about if I use the MR.B for the primary stage and then use the jug for mixing sugar in and bottling from?

Thanks for the help fellas, this site ROCKS! :rockin:

 

i wouldn't use the mr. beer fermenter for a secondary. the mr. beer fermenter doesn't seal off all the way. during primary there is co2 constantly coming out of the vents, so this doesn't matter really. but during secondary there is a lot less co2 coming out so i would worry a little bit more. the problem with the other for a secondary is there might be too much head space, maybe others will comment on this. i don't know any thing about types of plastic, but i would probably use it anyway. what was its intended purpose? if it has never been washed i would wash it really well, maybe a good soak in oxyclean or something to make sure you don't get any plastic taste. also you could do a search on "why not to use #3 type V plastics?".

 

He wasn't talking about using the MrB keg as a secondary, just a bottling bucket.
Yes, you can do that easily but I recommend buying the locking spigot and bottling wand as it makes it a LOT easier and reduces aeration during bottling.

I can't speak to the plastic either, but I bet somebody will be along that can.

 

Thanks, I've been thinking about a bottling wand, I'll probably pick one up before the time comes.
Kealia, you're correct. I was only mixing water/sugar with the beer in the MrB right before bottling. Also, the jug is a water jug, it's pretty heavy duty and it's got a nice handle. I'd really like to use it if I could.

 

oh ok. read it wrong. my kid was climbin on me while i was reading. then yeah, that should be fine.