Fermentation Question

[jchow79]

Hey guys,

I'm a first time brewer and I made a Belgian Saison. On brew day I boiled 4 gallons which was probably too much, steeped and used LME in the 4 gallons. I transferred into fermenter after cooling, and pitched the yeast at roughly 70 degrees. Its been fermenting for 5 days and the bubbles are still coming out rapidly. However I have not seen any of the spillover yet.

I made a lot of mistakes that day - and I think my biggest mistake was not being precise with the water. I was precise at boil time - however when transferring to the carboy I put 1.5 gallons of spring water directly into the carboy and then transferred the contents of my brewpot. I pretty much eye-balled.

What can happen? If I used too much water -then my beer will taste watered down, if I used too little water the beer will be very strong?

Also I forgot to take the gravity on boil day!
So many damn mistakes I need a checklist!

 

[TipsyDragon]

if you used to much water in the brew pot your bitterness will be higher than expected. if you didn't use all the wort or added to much water to top off you will end up with lower ABV.

 

[BendBrewer]

However I have not seen any of the spillover yet.

That normally only happens with BIG beers or when too small of a fermenter is used.

What can happen?

You're going to have beer to drink.

 

[jchow79]

What do you mean BIG Beers?

 

[dcp27]

On brew day I boiled 4 gallons which was probably too much, steeped and used LME in the 4 gallons.

I hope u didn't steep grains in the boiling water. Anything above 170F can extract tannins out of the grains.

Also I forgot to take the gravity on boil day!
So many damn mistakes I need a checklist!

No worries on missing the gravity reading with extract. With extract what you put in is what you get so your OG will be whatever it was expected to be.

 

[Got Trub?]

RDWHAHB

4g boiled so you will have less than 4g to pour into the fermentor. 1.5g added so you should be close to 5g total in your fermentor. Close enough for brewing, this is NOT rocket science. As mentioned you can calculate your OG when using extract, no need for a hydrometer reading.

There are no "hard" numbers for what is a big beer. I would consider anything > 1.060 a big beer; > 1.080-1.090 "really" big?

GT

 

[jchow79]

I steeped the grains at 170F, I didn't make every mistake in the book!

GT - How do you calculate the Original Gravity when using extract? Based on the recipe?

 

[dcp27]

LME is around 36ppg, so do 36 * lbs LME / batch volume = OG. So 6lbs of LME would give you about a 1.043OG in 5 gallons.
Aside from beersmith, there's also a few online calculators you can use to do it if you don;t like math, such as:
http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator
http://beercalculus.hopville.com/recipe