Discouraged and scared to brew again...

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Tankard

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So, after discovering a cardboardy off-flavor in my first AG (which was also in my last extract batch), I am left feeling very discouraged. I have been coming to this site less often, as the "SUCCESS ON FIRST AG!" threads leave me feeling depressed. Part of me really regrets turning over the cash to go AG, as my beer has not benefitted from the switch right away.

I know I'm overreacting, but I really wanted my first AG to be a success. I now have 50 bottles of beer that are drinkable, but are not as enjoyable as a Boston Lager would be, for example. I'm thinking of dumping this batch and just starting over... except I know now what I have to do. I MUST control my fermentation temperature next time. I MUST find a way to get my immersion chiller to get the wort below 80 degrees, instead of the 85-87 which is the lowest temp the wort drops to with my IC + tap water combo.

My plans for the future include building a "Son of a fermentation chiller," and buying a 25 foot copper prechiller, even though I'm not sure how these work. Next time I'll buy some 5.2 (not sure if I need it or not, however). I also am worried about my bottling strategy. Quite a few bottles get oxidized when the flow comes out too fast, or when the beer gets an air bubble in the bottling wand tube...

The worst part of it all is that this batch proved to me that something about my procedure is wrong. I thought my last batch had a bit of a "bite" simply because of the extract recipe, but this AG had the same thing.... It's me, not the recipe.

Sorry to sound so fatalistic, I guess I'm just venting. Thanks for listening
 
BD - everybody's beer has a flaw. Your's sounds like oxidization this time. You say its drinkable and many people are very forgiving on an apparent success. They will overlook small problems after succeeding at a new process.

You are being too hard on yourself, but that is part of becoming a better brewer all of the time. It sounds like you have a good beer and are poised to make an even better one next time.

I would look at your bottling and racking procudures 1st. Bubbles in the line are common and difficult to stop - but I be that you do better with every batch and every problem diagnosed is a problem that is one step closer to being solved.
 
I've got 6 cases of Phenols....TOO HOT FERMENTATION.

SUCKS, but what am I going to do....Quit Brewing? Not even an option.

Pull your slumping ego out of the trub, spritz it with a little starsan and go get a new recipe and some grains.
 
Bummer to hear that! The cardboardy taste is generally oxidation. Are you splashing the beer around at all, post fermentation? Maybe while racking, bubbles in your autosiphon? Getting any O2 in the beer during bottling? You might try the oxygen absorbing caps.

Hot side aeration is possible but most consider it unlikely. This might occur if you're splashing the wort from the MLT into the boil kettle.

For the cooler method, you can try a pre-chiller. You can search around for it, but it's basically an extra hose that sits between the water source and the immersion chiller. The extra hose sits in an ice bath(cooler or whatever) and pre chills the water into the IC so you can attain those extra crucial degrees of cooling.

I hope things improve for you! Maybe try brewing a 'bigger' beer that will hide some of the 'growing pains' in your process while you work it out.
 
Thanks for the replies.

I did use oxygen absorbing caps that *should* have gotten rid of the oxygen that I introduced when bottling. I keep trying to bottle without introducing oxygen, but if I run the flow too slow, the tube fills up with oxygen and the beer gets tossed around on the way to the bottle filler, or if I run it too fast, it ends up creating head in the bottles. Either way I get aeration. I think the biggest error was not getting the wort cold enough. I got it to about 85 and I thought it was fine. I guess it has to be about ten degrees lower than this. I will need to prechill to get it any colder, since my tap water is a bit on the warm side.

I need to find a way to control the temperature. If I can build it correctly, the son of a fermentation chiller seems like the way to go. I will also need to find some way of getting rid of that last 10 degrees. It will be some time before I get around to these projects, and I don't anticipate brewing again until I get these things figured out. No sense in making the same mistakes all over again.
 
Not going to sound like a broken record...but keep at it...took me a few AG batches to get it right. Hell my first extract was 'ok' just like my first AG. Hang in there, you'll be fine soon
 
Brew-dude, I understand you frustration, but cut yourself just a little slack. Rome was not built in a day, and great beer is not brewed overnight, so don't expect to be a master brewer after a few batches.
I really think that with controlling the fermentation temperature you will a dramatic improvement. Just realize that a ice bath etc, will lower the temp, a Son of Sam chamber or otherwise controls it. I use an old fridge with a "somewhat" cheap Johnson control unit. A few years ago I had a small fridge that I used, when that broke I just did not enjoy my homebrew as much. Since I moved back to using temperature control I just have a hard time drinking "expensive beer" at bars.
From all your post it seems like you do have a very good control over all of your processes, except giving the yeast the perfect environment to do their work during fermentation.
Keep the faith, and best of luck.
 
Cheer up man!! I did my first AG last Saturday. I missed OG by .011, .011!!!!! My IC is a piece of sh***. It took at least 30m to cool down the wort to 85F (Florida tab water). I asked my wife for help during the mashing, while I was running with hot water from my kitchen to the patio, she was yelling “it’s not warm enough, it’s not warm enough!!”. But I took a hydrometer reading yesterday and I tasted just a little bit from the hyd. jar, man, I’m sure is a crapy beer but since is my first AG, It couldn’t be better.
Your next batch will be better, and the next after that one, will be even better.
Don’t stop reading this forum, go get more grain and have fun.
:mug:
 
Get back on the horse dude!!!




or how about


I think I can .....I think I can ..... I think can


Point being...........keep trying.
 
do you use a bottling bucket and siphon out? if ya do try it this way instead, cut a short 3-4in piece of tubing and stick it on the end of the bottling spigot and then stick the wand into it, this will cut the amount of tubing that can hold an air bubble and reduce the contact time with beer. leave the spigot on all the time and use the gravity tip in the wand to shut off the beer flow.
 
Thanks again for all the replies. You guys are cheaper than a shrink.

do you use a bottling bucket and siphon out? if ya do try it this way instead, cut a short 3-4in piece of tubing and stick it on the end of the bottling spigot and then stick the wand into it, this will cut the amount of tubing that can hold an air bubble and reduce the contact time with beer. leave the spigot on all the time and use the gravity tip in the wand to shut off the beer flow.

I use a bottling bucket but I attach tubing to the spigot, like you mention. I think I need to get a new wand though, as it flows out way too quickly.
 
Keep on rockin'! I, too, didn't have a perfect first AG brew... missed the OG by at least ten points, but the batch still didn't last a full three weeks after they were carb'd. Stiff upper lip, and all that...

For cooling down more, Edworts recirculating ice water chiller is genius.


$40 bucks to make it and a bag of ice get me to 70 in no time.

Quick de-railing... I've been searching the forums for a solid link on a fountain pump that has a hose thread that I can screw the inlet to the IC, but am coming up empty. Anyone have a model # or link for what you've used for pumps?
 
My advice is to keep trying. It sounds like you already know the source of some flaws so that's good. I'd skip the prechiller and buy a cheap harbor freight sump pump. Put that in a tub of icewater and pump it through your chiller AFTER your tap gets it down to near 120F. You'll find the pump is about the same cost as 25' of copper and it will work MUCH better.
 
Thanks again for all the replies. You guys are cheaper than a shrink.



I use a bottling bucket but I attach tubing to the spigot, like you mention. I think I need to get a new wand though, as it flows out way too quickly.

This is what Eric is talking about, I think....

bottling_wand.jpg


bottling1.jpg
 
My advice is to keep trying. It sounds like you already know the source of some flaws so that's good. I'd skip the prechiller and buy a cheap harbor freight sump pump. Put that in a tub of icewater and pump it through your chiller AFTER your tap gets it down to near 120F. You'll find the pump is about the same cost as 25' of copper and it will work MUCH better.

+1 I brewed a batch yesterday on the patio. 95F in the shade. I used tap water to get the temp down to 90F in about 15 minutes. Then I switched the IC to a pond pump ($40 from lowes) in a bucket if ice water and brought the temp down to 65F in about 15 minutes. I was able to get my last lager down to 50F with pump a few weeks ago. The key is to get the boiling wort down below 140F as soon as possible.

The air in the line during bottling may be just co2 outgassing from solution. I used to get that when I bottled before I started kegging and I never had a problem with oxidation.

Don't give up. Work on getting your temps down and you will get better results.
 
+1 on the keep trying.

My first all grain took over 8 hours and I was up until after 1am finishing it up and I went to bed with everything still dirty. After all that the beer was "drinkable" but certainly not about to win any awards. Now, I have never submitted any beer for competition, so I still dont know about awards, but I know for sure that I make good beer. It takes a little time to get used to AG, you will get there. Trust me.
 
The best solution to your problem is to drink those oxidized beer fast! They don't get much better with age, so have some buddies over and drink em down. Then take the bottles and start over.
 
this reminds me of the scene from Dodgeball when Lance Armstrong asked Peter Laflure why he quit the dodgeball team...
 
2nd what eriktlupus says about bottling with the wand and a short bit of tubing.

Also, get a big cooler, a couple bags of ice, and a pond pump and pump ice water through your immersion chiller.

Start out with your tap water. When you approach 85, or you low point, switch the input of your IC to come from the pond pump in the icewater, and the return from it right back into the cooler. This will send icewater through the IC and drop your wort cooler than the tap water could.
 
Don't jump off the cliff yet... A couple of weeks ago I dumped two batches... pitched onto an infected yeast cake. I know the feeling. I looked at it as an opportunity to do a marathon brew session. :D All my fermenters are full now for the first time.

Practice makes :drunk:

- Eric
 
Dude..........Im sure your beer is not that bad. Also im also sure that if you had the chance to taste all of these "first time AG success" that you would probably think your beer was not to bad. Like someone mentioned earlier its all relative to your standards.
 
D-Day: War's over, man. Wormer dropped the big one.
Bluto: Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
 
So, after discovering a cardboardy off-flavor in my first AG (which was also in my last extract batch), I am left feeling very discouraged. I have been coming to this site less often, as the "SUCCESS ON FIRST AG!" threads leave me feeling depressed.

Also consider that folks who post with glowing reports of their first AG are a self-selecting group. There are plenty who had problems and didn't report. Of those that do report, many do report difficulties, mistakes, accidents, and challenges.

My mentor told me one time that there are two steps to accomplishing any complex, long-term project:

1. start
2. keep going

You've already got Step 1 conquered. :)

Keep your head up , brother.
 
I'm a newcomer myself and will be doing my first partial mash in the next few weeks. I have already had a failure just doing an extract brew (B3's American IPA). I know it was bad because I thought it was bad and then everyone else who tasted it thought it was bad. Not a good feeling.

I saw what everyone else said about bringing temp down. It is definitely key to get down to proper pitching temp as quickly as possible (68 deg).

I really firmly believe however that controlling your fermentation temp is one of the most important things you can do. Your idea of building the Son of the Fermentor is a great one. My only suggestion would be that if you are going to do that, you might as well as build the Mother of the Fermentor. The difference in materials cost and your labor are negligible. Might as well create enough space to fit two carboys instead of only one.

Best of luck and keep on rock'n in the free world. :rockin:
 
Like many have said before:
"The only way to fail in something is to quit trying."

If you love something, just keep trying and learn from your mistakes. Good beer is hard to make, otherwise everyone would be doing it right? Pay special attention to your sanitation processes, and DEFINITELY find a way to control your fermentation temperatures. The carboy in a bucket full of water, with a towel draped over it will work fine even in an 80F house.

For the immersion chiller, if you have the cash get a small roll of copper tubing and some fittings to make a pre-chiller. Stick the pre-chiller in a bucket full of ice, water and some salt. This will drop your tap water temperature well below 70F, and help you hit your pitching temp. Peace, and just keep trying!
 
Quick de-railing... I've been searching the forums for a solid link on a fountain pump that has a hose thread that I can screw the inlet to the IC, but am coming up empty. Anyone have a model # or link for what you've used for pumps?
I couldn't find any with garden hose fittings so I had to make it.

I went to home depot, in the garden section they have a 320 ghp fountain pump, in the plumbing section i got 2 hose clamps, a half inch barb with male threads, and a garden hose adapter. used a 3 inch piece of half inch ID beer line to connect the parts in this order:
pump output barb>1/2 in ID hose>1/2 in barb>garden hose fitting

It took me 20 minutes of thinking and finding the proper parts in the clusterf*ck plumbing dept but thats what I did and it works really well.
Even for being ghetto rigged.:fro:
 
Thanks for the replies.

I did use oxygen absorbing caps that *should* have gotten rid of the oxygen that I introduced when bottling. I keep trying to bottle without introducing oxygen, but if I run the flow too slow, the tube fills up with oxygen and the beer gets tossed around on the way to the bottle filler, or if I run it too fast, it ends up creating head in the bottles. Either way I get aeration. I think the biggest error was not getting the wort cold enough. I got it to about 85 and I thought it was fine. I guess it has to be about ten degrees lower than this. I will need to prechill to get it any colder, since my tap water is a bit on the warm side.

I need to find a way to control the temperature. If I can build it correctly, the son of a fermentation chiller seems like the way to go. I will also need to find some way of getting rid of that last 10 degrees. It will be some time before I get around to these projects, and I don't anticipate brewing again until I get these things figured out. No sense in making the same mistakes all over again.

Just think of it this way, Brewing is a constant evolution of finding techniques that work. I went AG about 2 years ago and I had to pour out my share of 5 gallon batches. :eek: Once I had a bacteria that took me 3 batches to find.

If it's not cleaning procedures, then its brewing techniques. Everything from Water chemistry to mash temps to sparge time to hop additions in the boil to cooling to fermenting, that's the evolution of brewing! I am now trying to dial in my fermentation, and I am finally getting great fermentation, making my own starters and controlling temp. I am not saying that I have mastered brewing, but I do have solid techniques and procedures that have developed over time and I am making consitantly good beer. My first competition entry was an IPA and I scored 33.5 points!

Just keep Brewing Man!

Eastside
 
I think, and I'm not saying you in particular, but I notice that a lot of N00b's think that moving quickly to AG means that their beer is instantly going to be perfect...Like All Grain brewing is some holy grail of perfection.

It's not, it is actually a complicated endeavor, with a lot more variables involved. And a lot more variables means a lot more opportunities to screw up.

AG doesn't make the best beer....A solid brewing process makes the best beer regardless of how/what way you make it.

I've had beers that have been made everyway possible, including in a mr beer that were phenomenal, and I have had beers that have been made everyway including all grain, that have made me want to gargle with a bmc just to get the bad taste out of my mouth.

It all comes down to basic process, sanitization, temp control, patience, etc...

But don't fall into the trap of thinking that AG is a "magic bullet" to beery perfection, or that it is better than any other type of brewing. Because a sucky process will still make sucky beer.

It takes a solid brewing process to make any beer good...

And how do you work on your process to improve it?

Do you quit brewing?

No!

You keep brewing, and working on your process until you get it dialed in. You go back to basics and make sure every part of the process is up to snuff.

You already have some ideas as to where you might have fell short...and you've been given a lot of good info here...

So apply some of it.:D Pimp your process!

One idea, is to choose the simplest AG recipe around, like a SMASH (single malt and single hops) recipe and brew that. That way you don't have to worry about things like adjuncts and cereal mashes, that will cut some of the variables out.

The grain & hopbill will also be relatively simple, and therefore realtively cheap to brew.

You might also want to consider to cut cost even further, get a 3 gallon better bottle and brew some 2.5 gallon AG batches. I've been playing around with small batches of different styles and it has been costing me around 14 dollars for ingredients (less if I am using my own selection of hops and yeast). That way if you screw up you'll feel like you only wasted 10 bucks as opposed to 30....plus 1 ounce of hops can go along way in a 2.5 gallon batch.

You can even make two different small batches, changing one thing in the process, like mash temp, or sparge volume, and see how much it changes your final product.

Don't give up, just realize that like learning anything new for the first time, it takes a great deal of practice to reach the desired goal.

:mug:
 
Also, while I would love to have and immersion chiller, I do not... I cool 6 gallons of boiled wort in a large sink with ice water. Brings the temp to 68 in about 30 minutes.

Used this method now for 10 AG batches (I do keg, though) without any issues.

As was said before, maybe look at the bottling process...

Eric
 
Also, while I would love to have and immersion chiller, I do not... I cool 6 gallons of boiled wort in a large sink with ice water. Brings the temp to 68 in about 30 minutes.

Used this method now for 10 AG batches (I do keg, though) without any issues.

As was said before, maybe look at the bottling process...

Eric

Me too, but now I have a sexy CFC :D
 
Get back on that horse and ride, cowboy!
50.gif
It sounds like you have a handle on what the problem may be. Being located in SoCal, the temps may well be your problem. Address that issue first and brew a simple pale ale. See if that improves things. Good luck!
 
As a member of the "hey I had a good first AG experience" club, I suggest you stop brewing and ship all bier and equipment to me!!! ;)

Seriously just 9 days ago I did my first AG brew, and followed that up with a second AG brew last night (Tues). As best I can tell it went really well. As for why this is relevant, the only reason that I'm progressing well is 1 luck and 2 I'm SUPER ANAL in getting EVERYTHING just right. It took me about 9 hours to do my first and my second AG brews, the second was done Tues. night, mistake! The only time I RDWHAHB is when I'm mashing!

+1 for the bottling advice using the wand attached to spigot.
As for cooling, I may get slammed for this, BUT! On basicbrewing.com the radio/podcast they have a discussion/show (believe it's in the 2006 year) discussing how, why, and what happens when cooling wort. If I remember correctly, the consensus was that brewing up the bier and placing it in the fermenter and letting it sit till it cools and pitching yeast the next day has no to little effect of bier taste. I haven't tried this!

My advice... keep brewing!

Schlante,
Phillip
 
I may get slammed for this, BUT! On basicbrewing.com the radio/podcast they have a discussion/show (believe it's in the 2006 year) discussing how, why, and what happens when cooling wort. If I remember correctly, the consensus was that brewing up the bier and placing it in the fermenter and letting it sit till it cools and pitching yeast the next day has no to little effect of bier taste. I haven't tried this!

My advice... keep brewing!

Schlante,
Phillip

You are taking a big chance that something (bug of some sort) will get a foothold of those sugars and multiply before the yeast has been pitched and the yeast has to get acclimated and build in numbers before it can try to ferment what is still fermentable. The damage done before the yeast has been added will most certainly ruin all that wort. I think this is the single most overlooked thing in brewing good beer. After the money and time has been spent brewing it is crazy to overlook this.
 
I have been brewing for about 16 months, AG for about 14 months. My first all grain was terrible, way too sweet. Get back on the horse and work on your process. Your beer will get better!

Leroy
 
The cardboard is definitely oxidation as mentioned before and most likely has nothing to do with whether you did an AG or extract and nothing to do with your temperature not getting down low enough (not that hat is not an issue - it just isn't related to the cardboard).

There is some great advice given above and it will all help you make better beer, but first focus on everything that is related to solving this oxidation issue before moving on. Do it step by step and look at every possible point where oxidation can come in. Is the transfer from the fermenter to the bucket smooth (the hose is all the way to the bottom of the bucket and the connection from the hose to the raking cane is firm and clamped if needed)? I am also confused by this statement you made:
I keep trying to bottle without introducing oxygen, but if I run the flow too slow, the tube fills up with oxygen and the beer gets tossed around on the way to the bottle filler, or if I run it too fast, it ends up creating head in the bottles. Either way I get aeration.
Too slow should not bring oxygen into the flow. If you bottle from the spigot and have a good seal of the hose to the spigot, there is no oxygen in the path of the beer to the bottle - it is a sealed system. If you see bubbles, it is either residual CO2 from the beer breaking out of solution or a bad connection of the hose to the spigot. Too fast is not introducing oxygen either. If the flow is so fast that it is causing a head to form, that head is made of CO2 from solution, not O2. Two solutions to too fast - the speed is related to the change in elevation between the beer inside the beer bottle and the level in the bottling bucket. If you have a 4 foot drop, you will have fast flow regardless the diameter of your wand. At the beginning with a full bucket, you can actually start with the bottom of the beer bottle and the bottom of the bucket at the same level. Second, keep the wand (which I assume has a spring loaded valve at the bottom) firmly against the bottom until the bottle is full and overflows beer, not just foam that might be caused by fast flow. The space made by removing the wand at this point creates the correct amount of headspace. Why fill until the instant it overflows? Unless you purge all of your bottles with CO2 before you start, they all have O2 in them. Filling all the way to the top past the point where foam is coming out and just to the point beer is just spilling out ensures there is no oxygen left. Yes, when you pull you the wand, its displacement now draws a bit of oxygen back in, but leaving caps on loose for a bit before crimping them on lets some of the CO2 in solution break out and push out the O2 plus you have O2 reducing caps to clean up the rest. Last point - since the bottles will have a bit of O2 from the displaced wand, move them gently once filled so as not to shake them up and mix that O2 in. Once the O2 absorbing caps are on for a while and have time to work, you don't need to be as careful.
 
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