First batch fermenting

[VirginiaHops1]

Hey guys. I'm obsessed with craft beer and for a long time wanted to get into homebrewing but just couldn't find the time thx to my kids, but FINALLY took the plunge last weekend. First batch is fermenting and I hear bubbling from the airlock so it seems I didn't totally screw it up! I won't get too cocky until I taste it but looking forward to hanging out in this forum more as I get into it. This first batch I used a kit from Northern Homebrewer, an IPA recipe.

I don't have much right now as I wait but I was wondering how involved you guys were on your first batch, in terms of your gravity readings? I do have a hydrometer but haven't used it yet and didn't take an OG reading, just had enough going on trying to follow directions and pull off my first brew day and didn't think much about it. So I figured I'd let this thing ferment for 4 weeks or so before bottling. I'm not using a secondary. I guess the proper thing to do is take gravity readings towards the end and make sure it's not moving? The recipe calls for dry hopping the last 5 days before bottling.

 

[bigdawg86]

You almost certainly would be just fine without gravity readings as long as you let it ferment for 14 days. If you are dry hopping I would imagine most around here would agree that with IPA's to maintain that fresh hop flavor, there is no need for secondary or even an extended primary. If you can, cold crashing helps clear the beer for bottling. The general consensus on gravity readings is to have 2-3 that are the same to ensure the beer is "done", but I have only take a single reading at the 2 week mark, and my beers have never been "not done". I don't like checking the gravity that much because it introduces oxygen, and each hydrometer flask takes nearly a pint of beer... a waste!

I would vote for follow the directions, leave beer for no more than 2 weeks, then bottle.

Oh and to answer your question, I didn't have a hydrometer the first few batches and did fine, but you literally cannot progress as a brewer without one. I'd say It was helpful when I would "practice mash" with my steeping grains and I started to realize that it would contribute a little to my OG... so I was able to provide a better ABV calculation as a result. Now that I am all grain, it's mandatory.

 

[Novacor]

I also wait 2 weeks before I take a gravity reading, then assume that it's done as long as it's close to what the estimated FG is supposed to be.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

Thanks for the quick replies. I believe the directions said to ferment 2 weeks, then an optional step of transferring to secondary and fermenting another 1-2 weeks. So I assumed even if I didn't use the secondary it would still need that additional fermentation in the primary. I was going to go 4 weeks if I skipped the gravity readings this time around just to err on the safe side. Is it detrimental to the beer if you let it go a few weeks extra once fermentation is done? My FIL who brews beer is actually in town next weekend so if it's ready at 2 weeks I wouldn't mind bottling while he's there to have a few extra hands.

 

[kh54s10]

You didn't say what style of beer it is but there is no need to wait 4 weeks unless it is a very high alcohol or dark beer that benefits from aging. I would dryhop at 10-14 days and bottle 3-7 days later.

For piece of mind to confirm fermentation is done, take the gravity readings. 2 days apart before you plan to bottle.

If you aren't already, check the temperature of the fermentation and control it in the mid sixties. Fermentation creates heat and if it gets too high - upper 70's you could get harsh fusel alcohol and other off flavors.

Look up swamp cooler.

 

[kh54s10]

That description is what trips up every new brewer. Secondary fermentation or secondary fermenter. In most cases fermentation should be complete before transferring to the "bright tank". If you do a secondary, it might make the beer a little more clear.

Another week or even the full four you were initially planning on should make no difference in the final product, with the exception of the "bigger" beers that I previously mentioned.

Your fermentation should be done when your FIL is there so you could bottle then.

My last beer was still extremely cloudy at 2 weeks so I cold crashed with gelatin. It is still sitting waiting for me to get around to bottling it. I am a good procrastinator.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

Thanks for the info! Extremely helpful.

As for the fermentation temp I went with a cheap chest freezer + temp controller. I like simplicity so wouldn't have minded doing without that setup but I live in Virginia, where summers are hot and humid and summer usually starts in May. I don't have a nice cool place in my house and didn't want to fight the heat and risk it ruining all the hard work put in on brew day.

 

[El Nino]

Congrats man! Which kit by northern brewer? My first brew was their Chinook IPA kit (extract with specialty grains), and tbh that one was one of the best beers I've had.

4 weeks for fermentation sounds a little excessive. To be quite honest your beer is going to likely be done fermenting by 2 weeks. If you want to be extra careful, do 3 (I saw someone on the forum mention they never do gravity readings but primary for 3 weeks and never get bottle bombs), but 4 is overkill imo.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

Mine is the Chinook also. That's the recipe that came with my starter kit. Great to hear yours tasted so good. Hopefully mine turns out that good too.

 

[NGD]

Thanks for the info! Extremely helpful.

As for the fermentation temp I went with a cheap chest freezer + temp controller. I like simplicity so wouldn't have minded doing without that setup but I live in Virginia, where summers are hot and humid and summer usually starts in May. I don't have a nice cool place in my house and didn't want to fight the heat and risk it ruining all the hard work put in on brew day.

I’m still fairly new and clearly remember going through similar thoughts and issues.
Leaving a beer in the fermenter an extra week or two is absolutely fine, with perhaps the exception of something like an IPA where your trying to get the fullest hop flavor you can out of your beer. I think then you want to bottle as soon as fermentation is finished (2 consecutive gravity readings with no change over 2-3 days). A good practice is if your not sure, leave it for an extra few days.

As for using a secondary, I’ve stopped using mine unless I’m adding more flavors. I can achieve a clear beer by leaving in the fermenter an extra week and dropping the temp in the fermenter for 24-48 hrs to cold crash. Fining with gelatin will also help, but for your first batch just focus on achieving a complete fermentation and proper carbonation. Patience is your friend with both.

 

[Matthew Nelson]

For me I only float a hydrometer to get OG and FG for abv estimation. For all other tests I use my refractometer. But if you are really obsessed you can drop one of these into your ferments and watch the gravity change in RT on your phone.

https://tilthydrometer.com

That's way more information then I would use or need, but its pretty cool none the less. My advice would be to use these first batches to get to know your yeast. What it does and looks like at each stage. After a couple batches using the same yeast you'll get to know it well enough to tell when it's done with primary and when it's ready to bottle by looking at it. Take all the measurements you want as long as you sanitize. Know your yeast and you will know your beer.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

Ok, so this beer finished and I bottled after 2 weeks fermenting and after 1 week of bottle conditioning I tried one and it was carbonated so I moved them to the fridge. This was around June 10th. I've been slowly drinking them since then, and trying to pick up on any tastes changes over the weeks so I can make a note of it. The taste has held pretty steady although might be rounding out a bit, or it's my imagination.

Anyways, my thoughts were the beer turned out pretty good, especially since I was just shooting for decently drinkable for my first one. Although it seems pretty balanced between the bitterness/hops/malt, there's a taste I'm picking up that I can't place but don't think I particularly like. I don't know how to describe it, maybe a little yeasty/bready. Or just a sweet maltiness I don't care for, compared to some of the really clean hoppy IPAs I like.

I did notice that the recipe used 4 oz steeping of Briess caramel 120, which as I've educated myself on grains I've learned has a roasty/toasty flavor and high Lovibond rating. It seems like most IPAs use the lower L rated crystals, so it's curious this kit used some 120L. Maybe that is the taste I'm picking up that I'm not used to in the IPAs I drink, and am not loving. Anyways, I'm brewing a DIPA right now which uses much lighter specialty grains so I'm interested to taste that one eventually and compare.

 

[El Nino]

It could be the yeast itself.

In a recently bottled / kegged batch of golden ale, I bottled about 19 of my beers until I accidentally kicked up some trub with the auto siphon and got the bottling wand clogged (yeah rookie mistake, learned that lesson and bought a bottling bucket). Took off the wand and siphoned the rest into a mini keg, but of course more yeast sediment made it into the keg than the bottles, thanks to what happened earlier, and restarting the siphon when the liquid level was already lower.

Sampling the taste of the kegged brew, there was a yeasty flavor. Not strong, but it was there. I gave it a 7/10, liked the flavor but not as clean as I hoped. Besides, after half of the glass I couldn't recognize it anymore (taste buds got blind to it at that point). The next day, I tried one of the bottles and there was no yeast flavor that stood out. Definitely better than the kegged brew, I gave it a 9/10. Since these bottles were before trub got kicked up into a cloudy haze, I'm guessing the flavor was from the yeast itself in the beer.

How did you transfer it to the bottle? A lot of these "starter kits" don't include a bottling bucket, and tell you to siphon from carboy to bottle. In my experience it's tougher to keep a siphon going and not kicking up trub when getting close to the bottom. Kegging was a diff story since I had a lot more control over the autosiphon itself. I'm hoping the bucket will also help me here.

Of course goes without saying, when pouring from a bottle, do it really slow and careful not to get the yeast sediment from the bottom of the bottle into your glass.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

I had a bottling bucket and one of those bottling wand things. I think the transfer was pretty clean.

 

[kh54s10]

3 weeks bottle conditioning is more standard. Keep them at room temperature. Cool for several days and the yeast will pack pretty tightly on the bottom of the bottle. I have tried some at 2 weeks, but ALL of my beers have tasted better at 3 weeks conditioning.

Pour gently leaving a little beer and the yeast in the bottom of the bottle.

This could also come from the C-120. That seems a strange choice for an IPA. Some don't like any crystal in their IPA's at all.

 

[RipC1ty]

I read one of your posts saying it’s hot and humid and you don’t have a great place to store it to keep cool. My recommendation with these circumstances would be to use Safale-US05 yeast. It’s extremely common, doesn’t need a starter (just dump it in your wort when it’s room temperature) and very forgiving with a wide temperature range, and is fast acting. I’ve used it for dozens of brews and never had any issues. All beers were ready to bottle within 7 days, I rushed one batch and voted after 5-Days as I was leaving for a long vacation and not once have had an exploded bottle.

I know you weren’t looking for advice on yeast but I know when I started out I wanted as much info as possible.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

I read one of your posts saying it’s hot and humid and you don’t have a great place to store it to keep cool. My recommendation with these circumstances would be to use Safale-US05 yeast. It’s extremely common, doesn’t need a starter (just dump it in your wort when it’s room temperature) and very forgiving with a wide temperature range, and is fast acting. I’ve used it for dozens of brews and never had any issues. All beers were ready to bottle within 7 days, I rushed one batch and voted after 5-Days as I was leaving for a long vacation and not once have had an exploded bottle.

I know you weren’t looking for advice on yeast but I know when I started out I wanted as much info as possible.

You may be thinking of another poster. I have a chest freezer setup so I can control ferm temps pretty well. I actually have used US-05 in both my batches so far though. It does seem really easy to use. I didn't re-hydrate either one but still got good fermentation activity. I'm interested to try liquid yeast at some point.

The more I drink this beer the more I think the flavor I'm picking up is more of a toasty malt, rather than yeasty. So I'm really wondering if it's the grains the kit used, the 120L in particular. I'm a bit of a hophead, so gravitate towards the more hop forward IPAs, but maybe they geared this towards the masses and made it maltier on purpose for that reason. The kit got great reviews on the NB website.

 

[NGD]

It could very well be the malt. It could be the beer didnt fully complete fermentation leaving behind some extra sugars. Some things that would help narrow this down would be

• What was your FG?
• How well did you oxygenate prior to pitching (adding) your yeast?
• How careful were you about splashing while bottling?

My first brew I didnt oxygenate the wort prior to pitching and it turned out overly malty for a pale ale. I would say I added to much LME at the beginning and I didn’t properly oxygenate prior to adding yeast. This led me to finish with a gravity on the higher end.

Best way to tell is to try and clone that recipe, only changing your specialty malt bill a little.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

Being my first batch ever I didn't take gravity readings, because I felt a bit overwhelmed just keeping everything else straight. I did take readings on my last batch. My comfort level was significantly higher on that one.

I oxygenated by just pouring the wort into fermenter and then shaking it up a bit before I pitched the yeast. We were pretty careful with bottling using one of those handy bottling wands. I don't think that part of the process caused any problems.

Redoing the recipe with some minor tweaks is a really good idea, to try to pinpoint the origins of certain tastes/flavors. I think I might try that

 

[NGD]

Another thing that might contribute to a toasty malt flavor is scorching LME. Nothing you’ve said thus far would indicate thats what happened but I figured I would add it for completeness. There are several ways to combat this and I’m constantly finding even extract brews can be made as complicated or as easy as you want. I’ve brewed the same belgian 3 times making some changes in technique and its gotten better (and faster) each time.

One other thing. If you plan on bottling for awhile and your kit came with a non-spring loaded version bottling wand, pop for a spring loaded one. They are much less mess. I do have a keg setup but still bottle a quarter to a half batch for sharing. That spring loaded wand was well worth the money.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

Thanks NGD. Appreciate all the info. This site is an awesome resource for noob homebrewers like me. I'm not sure if I scorched it or not but I will say I was way more careful with my second batch adding the LME, because at that point I had read enough to know it could happen. So who knows. I'll look into that bottling wand too. Thanks!

 

[S-Met]

I've not done it yet, but I've seen many say that you don't add your extract until flame-out (or at least partial boil) to minimize the scorching. Theory is that your extract is already concentrated. Supposedly reduces the extract "twang" as well.

 

[kh54s10]

I've not done it yet, but I've seen many say that you don't add your extract until flame-out (or at least partial boil) to minimize the scorching. Theory is that your extract is already concentrated. Supposedly reduces the extract "twang" as well.

You have to use some of the extract at the beginning to get proper hop isomerization. Most often it is 1/3 to 1/2 of the LME. The rest at flame out.