Help????

[tedog1985]

I purchased the Northern Brewery honey brown ale extract kit and cooked it up on the 19th. It started real soon with airlock activity and got a head of about 2 inches on it. Well today the 23 I have no airlock activity and no head.... My first gravity reading was 1.051 and today I took a sample and got 1.010.? Should it happen this fast? Also I tasted the sample and it tastes watered down? Is that normal...? The yeast I used was Wyeast #1056 American Ale Yeast. I kept it at temps around 70 deg. HElP... Thanks for all you help in advance

 

[ShortSnoutBrewing]

I purchased the Northern Brewery honey brown ale extract kit and cooked it up on the 19th. It started real soon with airlock activity and got a head of about 2 inches on it. Well today the 23 I have no airlock activity and no head.... My first gravity reading was 1.051 and today I took a sample and got 1.010.? Should it happen this fast? Also I tasted the sample and it tastes watered down? Is that normal...? The yeast I used was Wyeast #1056 American Ale Yeast. I kept it at temps around 70 deg. HElP... Thanks for all you help in advance

To be cliche, relax, don't worry, have a homebrew (or any beer you enjoy for that matter). Robust activity can last 1, 2, 3, 4, etc days. There is no problem with 3 days of very active fermentation and then a slow down. Let it sit for another few days or few weeks. Everyone does it a little different. You'll figure out what works best for you.

 

[davefleck]

the watered down taste sounds strange but not unusual to be finishing up fermentation so soon. how much extract was in the kit? With that high an OG i'm suprised it's tasting watered down...

 

[newguy]

first off RDWHAHB! to your first question yes Fermentation can happen fast but your post shows 4 days for fermentation. IMO that sounds pretty normal. Did your kit come with starting OG and final OG readings? are you close to your final OG? by your readings it looks like your on track. Of course leave your beer in your primary for at least a week to make sure Fermentation is complete. Take another OG reading tomorrow and see if it moves any. If not you should be good to go. Rack to your secondary in a weeks time.


As far as the watered down taste that can come from a couple different things. How much water did you use for your boil? and how much water did you have to top off with to make 5 gallons? How much water did you loose in your boil? (evaporation)

 

[boothbrew]

first off RDWHAHB! to your first question yes Fermentation can happen fast but your post shows 4 days for fermentation. IMO that sounds pretty normal. Did your kit come with starting OG and final OG readings? are you close to your final OG? by your readings it looks like your on track. Of course leave your beer in your primary for at least a week to make sure Fermentation is complete. Take another OG reading tomorrow and see if it moves any. If not you should be good to go. Rack to your secondary in a weeks time.


As far as the watered down taste that can come from a couple different things. How much water did you use for your boil? and how much water did you have to top off with to make 5 gallons? How much water did you loose in your boil? (evaporation)

Newguy,

I typically use 2 gallons for the boil and my PF are marked at 5 gallons so I fill to that marking. Does the amount of water used in the boil make that much of a difference as long as you fill the PF to 5 gallons?
Let me know....

Thanks,

Boothbrew

 

[tedog1985]

Correction on the original gravity... My father wrote it down wrong.. It would have been 1.043. Thanks again for all your comments.

 

[tedog1985]

The instructions I got say boil with 1 1/2 gal. Then fill the 6 gal. carboy up with 2 1/2 gal. poor the 1 1/2 gal that you boiled into the carboy and then top off to 5 1/2 gal.

 

[newguy]

well what matters is how much evaporation you loose in your boil. and then how much you have to replace with regular water. when you do small boils like 1 1/2 gallon boils you can loose (and this is not exact) 1/2 gallon or more to evaporation during the boil. So lets just say for arguments sake you lost 1/2 gallon to evaporation. so you added 1 gallon of wart to 4 1/2 gallons of regular water.

I think this may be your issue. I'm just taking a stab in the dark here.

IMO and what I learned early on doing kits is its better to have a larger volume of water for your boil. that way if you loose 1/2 gallon to evaporation it's not that big of a deal. when you do smaller boils you stand the chance of getting a lot more evaporation thus having to add more water.

Look at it like this. you go buy some juice concentrate at the store. the concentrate is added to water, if you took half the concentrate out and added what was recommended for water you would get a watered down juice right? Does that make sense?


I wouldn't worry to much. You beer will turn out good. I've found it really hard to screw up beer! But I have had issue like you are describing with water down tastes and what I explained above is what I came up with. Time will tell. But don't fret your style (brown ale) is very forgiving so just kick back relax and try a sample again in a couple weeks!

Hope this helps.

 

[boothbrew]

thanks, that was a good explanation.

 

[tedog1985]

Thanks for all your guys help>>>