Hey everyone,
So last Monday (June 7th) I brewed my first beer (an American Wheat Beer from Northern Brewer), and nearly everything went wrong. A nasty overboil burned some wort in to my stove I STILL can't get off, and (more dangerously), I finished making the wort and added the (I at the time thought) 2 gallons of boiled and cooled water and the wort to my fermenter, only to find that I had about 3 gallons of total liquid in there. At that point it was already 1 in the morning and I had work the next day, so I didn't have time to boil, cool, and add another 2 gallons of water. On the advice of a thread I found here, I put a lid on my fermenter (I'm using a bucket, not a carboy), and then the next night (Tuesday) re-boiled the wort to kill anything that might have taken root overnight, along with 2 gallons of water. I stuck it all in the fermenter, pitched my (dry) yeast, and put it in a corner.
On Wednesday night (24 hours later), my fermentation lock was bubbling away merrily - about one bubble-up every three seconds. As of Thursday night it was down to about one every 45 seconds, and by Friday morning it had stopped. I went away for the weekend, and tonight (five full days after pitching the wort) I finally took the gravity of the wort (I forgot to take an original gravity - I'm absolutely kicking myself for that, but it's a mistake I won't make again). The gravity was at 1.12, and there was no krausen at all. I tried some of the beer, and it tasted all right but really really watery. I'm thinking if the gravity hasn't changed by tomorrow or Tuesday, I'll just go ahead and bottle it.
So this is a lot of buildup, but what it comes down to is - is it a problem that my beer seems to have stopped fermenting after so little time, considering that the instructions with the kit (http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/AmericanWheatBeer.pdf) say it should take about two weeks? Or the fact that it's on the watery side? Will it be able to bottle all right?
Thanks a lot for taking the time to read this far!
So last Monday (June 7th) I brewed my first beer (an American Wheat Beer from Northern Brewer), and nearly everything went wrong. A nasty overboil burned some wort in to my stove I STILL can't get off, and (more dangerously), I finished making the wort and added the (I at the time thought) 2 gallons of boiled and cooled water and the wort to my fermenter, only to find that I had about 3 gallons of total liquid in there. At that point it was already 1 in the morning and I had work the next day, so I didn't have time to boil, cool, and add another 2 gallons of water. On the advice of a thread I found here, I put a lid on my fermenter (I'm using a bucket, not a carboy), and then the next night (Tuesday) re-boiled the wort to kill anything that might have taken root overnight, along with 2 gallons of water. I stuck it all in the fermenter, pitched my (dry) yeast, and put it in a corner.
On Wednesday night (24 hours later), my fermentation lock was bubbling away merrily - about one bubble-up every three seconds. As of Thursday night it was down to about one every 45 seconds, and by Friday morning it had stopped. I went away for the weekend, and tonight (five full days after pitching the wort) I finally took the gravity of the wort (I forgot to take an original gravity - I'm absolutely kicking myself for that, but it's a mistake I won't make again). The gravity was at 1.12, and there was no krausen at all. I tried some of the beer, and it tasted all right but really really watery. I'm thinking if the gravity hasn't changed by tomorrow or Tuesday, I'll just go ahead and bottle it.
So this is a lot of buildup, but what it comes down to is - is it a problem that my beer seems to have stopped fermenting after so little time, considering that the instructions with the kit (http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/AmericanWheatBeer.pdf) say it should take about two weeks? Or the fact that it's on the watery side? Will it be able to bottle all right?
Thanks a lot for taking the time to read this far!
