I am following a recipe from my Grandma's old Brewing book which has a limited amount of instructions to say the least, so I've been visiting this site pretty much every day to clarify different steps on my path to my first ever homebrew.
I am brewing 1 gallon of standard dark ale with 'real ale yeast'. The recipe said to leave the wort in the fermenter for 1 week, then add 2oz of cane sugar and bottle. I thought this was a little much but I've never done it before, so the time came and I added the sugar and the fermenter went nuts with froth - just as much as it did the day I put it in there!
I assumed the fermentation must not have actually finished, and left it for another week. Today, I decided to look into more detail about the amounts of priming sugar to add etc, so I followed the calculator that someone had posted up and added 1.3 oz of liquid malt extract, believing this would be gentler but sufficient to carbonate the bottles.
Same thing again - my fermenter has foamed up like it's starting all over again. I wouldn't be so worried, but I was trying to make the beer as a Christmas present for my dad and I'm running out of time for the bottles to condition etc (it's only 4 weeks tomorrow till Christmas) so anyone got any advice or know what the hell is going on with it?
I don't want to rush it obviously - despite the deadline, I'd rather have a good batch of beer a week late than have all the bottles explode and leave me and my dad with nothing after all my hard work.
Any comments would be appreciated, thanks.
I am brewing 1 gallon of standard dark ale with 'real ale yeast'. The recipe said to leave the wort in the fermenter for 1 week, then add 2oz of cane sugar and bottle. I thought this was a little much but I've never done it before, so the time came and I added the sugar and the fermenter went nuts with froth - just as much as it did the day I put it in there!
I assumed the fermentation must not have actually finished, and left it for another week. Today, I decided to look into more detail about the amounts of priming sugar to add etc, so I followed the calculator that someone had posted up and added 1.3 oz of liquid malt extract, believing this would be gentler but sufficient to carbonate the bottles.
Same thing again - my fermenter has foamed up like it's starting all over again. I wouldn't be so worried, but I was trying to make the beer as a Christmas present for my dad and I'm running out of time for the bottles to condition etc (it's only 4 weeks tomorrow till Christmas) so anyone got any advice or know what the hell is going on with it?
I don't want to rush it obviously - despite the deadline, I'd rather have a good batch of beer a week late than have all the bottles explode and leave me and my dad with nothing after all my hard work.
Any comments would be appreciated, thanks.