First time brewing, great way to burn your house down!

[unionrdr]

Some on here have left it on th yeast cake for several months with no autolysis. That one is pretty much dead.

 

[Nickh08215]

Smoked turkey sounds awesome! I've had it deep fried and it was the juiciest I've ever eaten, but I gotta try smoking it sometime. Minus the flaming smoker hahah.

And honestly, the only dark beer I've ever had we're black and tans or guiness so I have no reference for a English brown. So I don't think I'll be to disappointed even with off favors, unless it just tastes like crap which I highly doubt.

Honestly, I wis there was some way to keep te sweetness of the wort in the final product. It tasted amazing when I tried it before putting it in the fermenter. Talking about its got me curious. TASTE TEST TIME!

 

[Nickh08215]

Well... It's beer! Haha. I don't taste any fruity or weird flavors, but I do get a slightly bitter, alcoholic aftertaste which I would assume is the fusels, but it's not very off-putting at all, and of I didn't know any better I would just account that to it being a dark beer, so I think I'm in good shape. I'll call this brew a success!

Wierd though. Fermentation slowed almost to a halt for the past few days (bubbles in airlock every 2-5 minutes, now it's back to having air bubbles about every 30 seconds. There has been no temp change at all. Anybody have any reasons for this?

 

[JonM]

Smoked turkey sounds awesome! I've had it deep fried and it was the juiciest I've ever eaten, but I gotta try smoking it sometime. Minus the flaming smoker hahah.

Here's what you can look forward to!

 

[RM-MN]

Well... It's beer! Haha. I don't taste any fruity or weird flavors, but I do get a slightly bitter, alcoholic aftertaste which I would assume is the fusels, but it's not very off-putting at all, and of I didn't know any better I would just account that to it being a dark beer, so I think I'm in good shape. I'll call this brew a success!

Wierd though. Fermentation slowed almost to a halt for the past few days (bubbles in airlock every 2-5 minutes, now it's back to having air bubbles about every 30 seconds. There has been no temp change at all. Anybody have any reasons for this?

There was an earthquake that you didn't feel and it stirred up the beer just enough for it to release CO2 or maybe a hurricane is forming nearby and the lower atmospheric pressure caused the beer to bubble or maybe .....

Bubbles are fun to watch but other than that they don't mean a whole lot. While your yeast are actively eating sugars the give off CO2 and part of that escapes through the airlock and part gets dissolved into the beer to be released later. When you think your beer may have had enough time in the fermenter, use your hydrometer to check. It's the only way to be sure.

 

[Nickh08215]

That looks great! Did u have anything stuffed in the cavity of it during cooking? If I was you I woulda cut a lemon and an onion in half and shoved it in there with a bunch of thyme and rosemary just for some aromatic flavors, maybe some garlic too. But next year I'm coming to your house! Haha. Did you serve any home brew with it??

And also I don't have a hydrometer yet so I'm gonna let it sit on the yeast for a few weeks just so I know there's no possibility that it's still active.

I still gotta buy bottles so I'm gonna get the mad brewers kit from NB as my next buy for my mini brewery. I'm gonna need it once I start making my melomels.

Like I said ima chef so really mead and melomels seem like they'd peak my creative interest a lot more then beer would just because I feel like there's a lot more I can do as far as flavors and aromatics. I'll brew beer to just do I have something to do while I wait on my melomels to age

I'm actually thinking of adding a small hint of vanilla to my caribou slobber just to enhance the chocolatey/coffee flavors I get as well as giving it a little more depth of flavor

 

[jerrodm]

A couple of things:

1--welcome to the fun! Sounds like you jumped right in, which is exactly what you should do. Brewing is nothing but great times*, and I'm sure you'll be hooked before you know it.

2--as others have said, your beer is probably fine. Read about 500 posts in this thread or until you've convinced yourself that this is true.

3--Don't rush to taste/measure/mess with your beer. Go buy some good beer at the store to kill your urge to screw around with the fermenter. Take a walk, or a cold shower. Take up yoga or meditation. Anything, just leave it alone for a couple of weeks. At least. Then leave it for another week. It'll get there all by itself. And it'll be fine.

4--Start brewing another batch. Like now. First off, you'll still be fresh enough to remember the things you did wrong the first time around, so you can start to correct some of your mistakes. Second off, you want to get into the habit of brewing regularly, because that first batch will be gone before you know it, and there's nothing worse than realizing that you've got eight homebrews left and nothing in the pipeline, so there's going to be at least a couple of weeks where you have NO homebrew...it's the worst. Brew early and often, and keep your pipeline full.

Again, welcome to the fun. Cheers!

*This isn't entirely true. Sometimes, like anything else you come to care about deeply, it can be maddeningly frustrating, like when you just can't figure out why you're not hitting your target gravity, or your fridge fails at just the wrong time and you ruin a great beer with high fermentation temps). But it all comes out in the wash. MOST of it is great!

 

[RM-MN]

That looks great! Did u have anything stuffed in the cavity of it during cooking? If I was you I woulda cut a lemon and an onion in half and shoved it in there with a bunch of thyme and rosemary just for some aromatic flavors, maybe some garlic too. But next year I'm coming to your house! Haha. Did you serve any home brew with it??

And also I don't have a hydrometer yet so I'm gonna let it sit on the yeast for a few weeks just so I know there's no possibility that it's still active.

I still gotta buy bottles so I'm gonna get the mad brewers kit from NB as my next buy for my mini brewery. I'm gonna need it once I start making my melomels.

Like I said ima chef so really mead and melomels seem like they'd peak my creative interest a lot more then beer would just because I feel like there's a lot more I can do as far as flavors and aromatics. I'll brew beer to just do I have something to do while I wait on my melomels to age

I'm actually thinking of adding a small hint of vanilla to my caribou slobber just to enhance the chocolatey/coffee flavors I get as well as giving it a little more depth of flavor

There must be over 20 different malts and perhaps 30 or more hop varieties and a bunch of different yeasts to get creative with plus you can add other things to change the character of the beer. I just heard of a coconut beer that is available in very limited locations that sounds good and racking onto oak chips or vanilla beans or some fruit or...
You can brew every week for the rest of your life and not use up all the possible combinations of beers.

 

[Nickh08215]

There must be over 20 different malts and perhaps 30 or more hop varieties and a bunch of different yeasts to get creative with plus you can add other things to change the character of the beer. I just heard of a coconut beer that is available in very limited locations that sounds good and racking onto oak chips or vanilla beans or some fruit or...
You can brew every week for the rest of your life and not use up all the possible combinations of beers.

Well I guess that's just my personal opinion ya know? Like I know you can get all kinds of crazy delicious beers from messing with differant ingredients, brew styles, and even amounts of differant things, but a mead is like a blank canvas to transform into anything you want. Beer to me
Feels like a more exact science that I dont feel I want to dive into this early in my brewing. Eventually I'll probably be making crazy beer recipes too, don't get me wrong, but just not at this stage in the game for me

 

[dadshomebrewing]

mead is easier up front, but takes longer before it's ready (up to 6 months in the jug or bottles).

what i'm doing is learning to make a very basic pale ale, and use that as a baseline, and learning how, and when, to add things, and what to add.

much like when i first learned to cook, i learned how to make a few basic pan sauces, and braises, and then over time added and subtracted things to learn how they work.

i'm not a chef, but just an old geezer who likes to eat.

as far as mead vs beer, i make a batch of mead once in a while, and a batch of beer the other weekends, always 1 gallon batches.

and, much like when i was learning how to cook, i vary something up or down, or add something different each time.

 

[Nickh08215]

Well that's kinda what I mean. Mead is easier to play with up front. So I'll be able to express some creativeness right off the bat, while getting some beer experience under my belt. After a few batches of extract kits, once I have a good system for keeping proper temps and proper sanitation techniques, as well as a good grasp on documentation of my processes and how to take the gravity and all that stuff, I'm gonna move straight into all-grain brewing, and after getting a few batches of that under my belt, start working on my own recipes.

On paper it sounds easy, but that could take months before I have all that Down to where I feel comfortable brewing my own recipies

 

[dadshomebrewing]

btw... one thing i saw that was very intriguing was to make a full 5 gallon batch of mead, but then rack them into 5 separate one-gallon carboys for flavorings.

since mead is so much easier to make, up front, that makes a lot of sense.

and 5 gallons of mead would last me a very long time.

 

[JonM]

Google "Joe's quick grape mead" and "Joe's no age mead.". There are a couple recipes that are pretty good in a month or so. They're a good way to get into the ins and outs of mead making.

 

[WileECoyote]

Hello Again, Great learning experience, Always boil without lid, You want to leave the brew pot uncovered in order to allow dimethyl sulfides (DMS) to boil off. Don't feel bad at all, we all make mistakes, just 3 days ago I miss calculated how much water I could use for a dunk sparge on a BIAB with 13 lbs of grain, and yes 1+gal of 187 deg water all over everything including my wife and I, everyone's ok, no burns, I chalk it up to sh*t happens, we all make mistakes, learn from it, so it doesn't happen again.

And yes I have just switched over to doing All-grain BIAB.

Great atitude BTW and keep brewing, you and your brew will do just fine, if your beer dose have a hot alcohol bite, just age it for 3 to 6+ months in bottles or keg and that will help mellow it out, and yes I am speaking from experience on that too. lol

Good Luck an Cheers

 

[Nickh08215]

Screw that! I'll deal with the extra alcohol flavor. I can't wait that long to drink my firs batch of brew ever!

And i was wondering. Is it just a strong alcohol FLAVOR that I got from the warm fermentation or is the brew itself actually more alcoholic? Because if it's more alcoholic, playing with fermentation temps is something I'm going to be really interested in messing around with

 

[45_70sharps]

I once set my kitchen on fire trying to boil a chicken, and another time making potato pancakes.

Mmmm...... potato pancakes

 

[RM-MN]

Screw that! I'll deal with the extra alcohol flavor. I can't wait that long to drink my firs batch of brew ever!

And i was wondering. Is it just a strong alcohol FLAVOR that I got from the warm fermentation or is the brew itself actually more alcoholic? Because if it's more alcoholic, playing with fermentation temps is something I'm going to be really interested in messing around with

It's the alcohol flavor because it isn't ethanol that you are tasting when you get that "hot alcohol" flavor in beer that is fermented too warm. There are reports that this "hot alcohol" brings on the hangover headache but I haven't been able to prove that.

 

[Nickh08215]

I was under the understanding that a hangover is caused by dehydration. And damn that sucks. So I get all the bad qualities of alcohol (the hot bite and the hangover) without the good qualities. But hey. It's a learning experience

 

[RobertRGeorge]

Fermenting at the upper end of the temp range encourages the production of methanol, but this is really only a significant problem with fruit fermentation, as the methanol is primarily a product of yeast metabolizing pectins. Grain fermentations produce very small amounts of methanol.

 

[unionrdr]

Hot alcohol flavors are generally referred to as fusel alcohols. They come from high initial ferment temps. If it's not too bad/you caught it soon enough,they can be cleaned up in primary by allowing the yeast time after FG is reached to do so & settle out clear. Time in bottles can also help some. But if it's pretty bad you'll be stuck with it for the most part.

 

[WileECoyote]

Hot alcohol flavors are generally referred to as fusel alcohols. They come from high initial ferment temps. If it's not too bad/you caught it soon enough,they can be cleaned up in primary by allowing the yeast time after FG is reached to do so & settle out clear. Time in bottles can also help some. But if it's pretty bad you'll be stuck with it for the most part.

+1 Fermenting with higher temps than the recommend fermentation temps for a particular yeast will produce fusel alcohol (=bad) in your beer.

Nickh08215 Screw that! I'll deal with the extra alcohol flavor. I can't wait that long to drink my firs batch of brew ever!
And i was wondering. Is it just a strong alcohol FLAVOR that I got from the warm fermentation or is the brew itself actually more alcoholic? Because if it's more alcoholic, playing with fermentation temps is something I'm going to be really interested in messing around with

LMAO I know exactly how you feel, waiting sucks.

I would highly recommend against fermenting at higher than recommended temps for each yeast, different yeast like different fermenting temps, fermentation temp management i.e. proper/controlled temp is very good for your beer.

Its just a strong alcohol FLAVOR that you got from the warm fermentation, if you want higher alcohol in a batch, do a quick search and you will find lots of threads on how to accomplish just that = add sugar, add malt extract, add more grain, yada yada yada, lots of ways to add alcohol, but they will change the profile of your beer too, so you will need to do some research to figure out how to properly accomplish what you want.

The simple/easiest way I can recommend, is to just order a high ABV kit and brew it for your next batch.

Cheers

 

[jbaysurfer]

Mine wasn't technically smoked. It was bbq'd on a propane grill with a smoker box. This imparts some of the smokey flavor but it's really a roasted/smoked Turkey. Here's mine early on. I brined it for 2 days, rubbed it down with an herb butter and stuffed a bunch of fruit in the body cavity:

Naturally I enjoyed some of my punkin' ale, but I also busted out one of my favorite commercial brews for the occasion:

In a thinly veiled attempt to bring this back around: OP; NO...higher temps aren't going to appreciably increase your alcohol content, and will only encourage production of bad tasting/headache causing alcohols.

From wiki:

The term fusel is German for "bad liquor".[1]