First time brewing in years, need help

[CyberErik]

Hey guys, I just registered and I have seen a lot of question threads like this where people have gotten great advice. I brewed a few batches in college, mostly of hard cider, and honestly I wasn't very scientific about it (didn't take SG or temperature readings, didn't really care too much about volumetrics, etc).

So that was ~4-5 years ago, so I recently decided to get back into it, and my fiance bought me a kit for my birthday last week.

So last night was the big night. I made my steeping bag of grains, steeped it in water for 30 min, added my malt and my hops (I'm making an APA), boiled for an hour, then took it off the heat, added the aroma hops and force cooled it to ~80 degrees before racking my ~4 gallons of wort into my fermenter already containing ~1 gallon of room temperature sterilized water.

I have a number of concerns though, which I will list hear and hopefully you guys can help me out:

1. it has been 6 hours and I still can't see any bubbles in my fermenter. I went to sleep so it could have furiously fermented during those 6 hours, but I am not sure. I did notice that the part that bobs up and down in the airlock was displaced a bit, but not "bubbling" and people have said that that could indicate an increase in pressure.

2. I saw on here after the fact that this is a big brewing "no no" but I did the "swish vodka then mouth syphon" method of starting my syphon. I have read that it's obviously not ideal but that people have done it without getting an infected batch, so I'll hope for the best there. I tried the "water through the syphon as a suction" method, but I couldn't quite get it to work- I'll try next time.

I will say that I am a cancer researcher by profession, and I use sterile technique every day. Therefore I can see that a lot of what we homebrewers seem to take as bible (i.e. compulsively sterilizing) really may just be a peace of mind thing more than anything. Even after we sanitize and rinse with boiled water and then rack the beer, the mere seconds it takes to do that introduces millions of bacteria into the system. To be truly sterile you'd have to do it in a positive pressure fume hood.

So I'm less concerned than most about a little bit of nonsterility in my procedure, as it's not quite 100% sterile to begin with is my point.

3. I took an OG reading sample when I put it in the fermenter, and it came back as 1.065. My manual said that 1.040 - 1.045 at 70 degrees F is desirable so this seems way off. I'm a noob with this stuff, what could that indicate? It's possible that I added slightly too much malt per volume (I think the wort I made was ~4-5 gallons and the malt was for 6 when I read the packaging, but the recipe I got said to use all of it. Could this be the reason that I don't see bubbles?

I know the best advice for a beginner who is panicking is to calm down and be patient. I will try to do that, but in the meantime any and all help would be appreciated.

 

[atom]

1. don't worry about bubbles...they are pretty meaningless

2. not ideal...but don't worry about it.

3. your wort wasn't properly mixed...with extract it's hard to miss the OG if you used the correct volumes.

4.

I know the best advice for a beginner who is panicking is to calm down and be patient.

 

[wfowlks]

You can always add more water if you want to bring the OG down

 

[CyberErik]

Thanks for the speedy, and good response to my questions!

So what are the implications of missing the OG?

 

[Klickmania]

If you didn't use a starter for your yeast (I'm assuming you didn't) it could take any where from 2-3 days to see any signs of fermentation. I made a brown ale with Wyeast 1099 and no starter and that didn't start fermenting (visibly) until early day 4 and it turned out fine. Just relax and everything is gonna be a-ok.

 

[slow_boat]

In general you won't see bubbles for 24 hours. Your higher OG shouldn't inhibit your yeast too much. The higher OG is due to the lower volume than the recipe specified. And finally, using that method for siphoning can be hit and miss. Check out youtube for some videos on how to siphon properly, great resources available.

 

[stratslinger]

A couple things:

First off - if you did a extract kit, you didn't miss your gravity. One of two things happened: You simply didn't have the concentrated wort and your top off water adequately mixed before you took a sample. This is a really common thing to happen when topping off. That, or your hydrometer is off. It is extraordinarily uncommon to miss the gravity on an extract kit. As in, it just doesn't happen, unless you spill the extract everywhere except in your kettle!

But, if you did miss your gravity: Miss it high, you'll likely wind up with a higher alcohol content beer in the end, miss it low, you'll likely wind up with a low alcohol content beer in the end.

Now, I also noticed you using the term "sterile" a few times in your first post, and you mentioned using boiling water to sterilize things... And you may be missing a significant point here. Brewers are not, outside of a few very specialized procedures, trying to attain sterile conditions. We're trying to attain "sanitary" conditions. One's definitely attainable in your kitchen/backyard/basement/etc, while, as you pointed out, the other definitely isn't! Look into picking up a bottle of starsan or iodophor - they're both wet-contact sanitizers. I personally use starsan, but both work on similar principles. Dilute a little bit of the stuff in 5 gallons of water, and then dunk anything you need to sanitize into the solution for 10-30 seconds, and it's sanitary as long as it stays wet. So, where something is sterilized by hitting it with boiling water, but then immediately coated with bacteria again once it's exposed to air, iodophor or starsan actually stay in contact with the surface and continue to kill those microbes that come in contact with them - at least, those microbes that we, as brewers, are concerned with.

Hope this helps!

 

[rodwha]

1) You may not have a great seal allowing the gasses to escape elsewhere.

2) I have been suck-starting my siphon for the past several brews without incident. But I just ordered an easy-siphon yesterday as there are people interested in learning. I wouldn't exactly be thrilled to see that their beer I had been drinking was siphoned in such a manner...kinda like knowing they licked my bottle before they handed it to me. And it's kinda hard to stress the importance of cleanliness and then do that.

3) Did you adjust your hydrometer reading for the temperature difference? If you followed the directions of your kit you should be good. You may have converted more sugars with your steeping. You may not have mixed it all well enough too. But it sounds to me as though the kit was intended to yield 6 gallons and you made 5, which would be why it was higher than intended.

 

[tre9er]

Never watch the airlock and translate it to fermentation. It's just releasing pressure which CAN be a result of fermentation or just off-gassing. Gravity readings after a week will tell you if there is a problem.

Get an auto-siphon. They're incredibly cheap and more sanitary, not to mention easier to start.

 

[CyberErik]

I can't believe how rapid and helpful these responses have been. This place really is great, especially for beginners!

As for this:

A couple things:

First off - if you did a extract kit, you didn't miss your gravity. One of two things happened: You simply didn't have the concentrated wort and your top off water adequately mixed before you took a sample.

That is definitely what happened, I don't know that I even mixed it much (if at all) after I added the water before taking a sample.

 

[boscobeans]

Some yeasts are slower than others. Which one was in the kit?

I use a lot of Nottingham and get nothing in just 6 hours, 18 hours later and it starts to get a little crazy. Be prepared for anything and have a blow off tube ready in case it decides to get a little violent..

bosco

 

[rodwha]

As bosco mentioned have a blow off tube ready. I have often had a little bit of an eruption with as much as 1 1/2 gallons of head (dead) space (5 gallons in a 6 1/2 gallon bucket).

 

[CyberErik]

how do I make a blowoff tube and how do I use it?

 

[jbaysurfer]

how do I make a blowoff tube and how do I use it?

Just attach a tube to your carboy hood, or the opening in your bucket and put the other end in a jar/bottle/growler/bucket/whatever of starsan, or if you don't have starsan, you can use whatever else you used for sanitizing. This creates an airlock so no nasties can climb up the tube and get into your beer. For the proper diameter tube, it depends on the vessel and what you use to close it with. If you're using glass carboy, lots and lots of folks just get a 1 1/4" OD tube (I believe, somebody correct me if this size is wrong) and shove it in the opening. It'll seal. If you're using a carboy hood/stopper just attach the tube to the stopper/hood by sliding it onto the biggest opening (hood) or in the hole (stopper). The right diameter depends on which one you're using. I use the hollowed out rubber carboy stopper and use a 1/2" ID hose to go over the nipple in the middle. I use blowoffs almost exclusively until primary is basically coming to an end and I need to move the carboy. Then I use an S shaped airlock.

Edit: I've found that bubbling can be hard to detect in those 3 piece airlocks like you have ("the part that bobs up and down"). The S shaped airlocks have a much more discernable bubble that you can see and hear. I prefer the S shaped ones for that reason. As others said, bubbling shouldn't be your measure of fermentation, but I'll be honest. I always make a note of when I pitch and when the bubbling starts, so I do use it as a sign that everything's going as planned anyway. Also 6 hours is nothing. Most ale ferments won't start that fast unless you pitched a big active starter, or re-used a yeast cake. There's a whole thread to help you take your mind off the issue in the sticky section at the top of this forum.

"Fermentation can take 24 to 72 hours to start"

For me it's usually 8 to 12 hours. The yeast need some time to multiply, and eat up all that O2 you aerated with before they can actually start fermenting the sugars in the wort.

 

[CyberErik]

At 12:30 pm (the 8.5 hour mark) we have bubbles! Approximately bubbles every 30 seconds! I'm not sure when it started exactly bc I hadn't checked in like 3 hours.

 

[jbaysurfer]

At 12:30 pm (the 8.5 hour mark) we have bubbles! Approximately bubbles every 30 seconds! I'm not sure when it started exactly bc I hadn't checked in like 3 hours.

Congrats. Keep your temps under control. Letting them get away from you (specifically: letting it get too warm) within the next 72 hours can be bad news!

 

[bighorn_brew]

#2. You didn't, at least I didn't see, what temperature your measuring your specific gravity at. Get your digital therm probe out measure and google temperature correction specific gravity..
http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/hydrometer.html?14825647

 

[CyberErik]

Thanks so much for the help guys, I have a few more questions that you can answer at your leisure:

1. I stored it in the kitchen which was a pretty steady 74 degrees F for the first 36 hours or so of fermentation. Then I saw that my fiance had baked a cake and raised the ambient temperature to like 78 degrees from the oven, so I moved it quickly to the living room next to the air conditioner where it should be much cooler. Did I screw anything up? I was as careful as I could moving the beer, hopefully I didn't slosh it too much, that's a big no no right?

2. I want to dry hop in my primary, can someone please go into more specifics how you do this?

I was planning on opening my bucket on day 10 or so, and throwing in a sanitized mesh bag filled with the hops, and immediately replace the lid, and leaving it in there for 5-7 days before bottling.

However is this ok to just open the bucket and then seal it again? Won't that aerate the beer? Is there a way to do this without breaking the seal, or is this not a problem?

 

[wfowlks]

1. It won't be a problem because the CO2 should have displaced all the air. It is fine, minor temp fluctuations wont really effect the taste, 78 is a little high but I think you are just wigging out. I prefer to put mine in a closet or the like.

2. If you want to dry hop in the primary, I would wait until like day 14 or so (I like to give things extra time). Then just pry the lid off and chuck your bag of hops in. CO2 is heavier than air, so as long as stuff doesn't drop in, you are golden.

Then just wait for 5 days, and then bottle/keg as you normally would.



Breaking the seal is fine. the only reason the seal is there is to prevent stuff from getting in that's not supposed to be there, like ants or bugs etc. Technically if you were in a clean room/environment you wouldn't even need a lid.

As for aerating the beer, unless you shake it violently and stir it up, somehow displacing the CO2 from the top of it, it will not become oxidized.

 

[CyberErik]

Thanks for all the help guys, you were an invaluable resource for the first batch.

The batch has been fermenting for about 5 days now, and when I squeeze the bucket a bit to vent gas, it smells EXACTLY like a pale ale (i.e. like it should). I'm so excited that I actually might have done everything right- I can't wait to dry hop in a few days and then get bottling.

 

[rodwha]

Don't you just love that smell!?!?