So I am new to brewing, just brewed my third batch on Sunday. I bottled my 2nd batch last night which was actually a rebrew of my first batch. The first batch was pretty good, great hop bitterness and aroma, however as I was trying to go for an Imperial IPA, I was a bit off so I tried brewing it again.
The second batch seemed to go much better, I hit a OG of 1.095 and a FG of 1.016. When we tasted a small sample in the very beginning there was a ton of hoppy bitterness which is what we wanted. It was in the primary fermenter for 14 days, and the secondary for 4 weeks with 10 days at the end for dry hopping before bottling yesterday. I had to leave it in the secondary for so long because I had to travel for 3 weeks.
When we bottled it last night, all of the hops disappeared, and the dry hopping had zero effect as the beer tasted very sweet. I have an idea about what happened between the first batch and the second batch from the same recipe, but would appreciate some input from everyone else.
I used two smack packs of 1056 Wyeast which I pitched to a starter a few days before I pitched it to the fermenter - so plenty of yeast.
As my brew kettle is only 29liters and can only comfortably handle 20-25 in a nice boil, I had two other pots going to reduce my wort down as I collected 31 liters of wort from my mash. I had to boil for 30-40 minutes to reduce the volume before I added any hops for the scheduled 90 min boil. I think this is where it all went wrong as I only added hops to the main brew kettle and probably caramelized the sugar in the post because of the long boil time - the two pots on the stove were on very high to reduce the wort down as quickly as possible. Does this make sense or am I missing something?
Is there any other information you need? to help answer this? The final product actually tastes quite good and would be perfect if I was trying to brew a barley wine, however I want to avoid this in the future so its important to understand what went wrong.
This was an all grain recipe, brewed with 7.2 kg of malt and 375 grams of hops (Magnum, Amarillo & Willamette). thanks for the help!
The second batch seemed to go much better, I hit a OG of 1.095 and a FG of 1.016. When we tasted a small sample in the very beginning there was a ton of hoppy bitterness which is what we wanted. It was in the primary fermenter for 14 days, and the secondary for 4 weeks with 10 days at the end for dry hopping before bottling yesterday. I had to leave it in the secondary for so long because I had to travel for 3 weeks.
When we bottled it last night, all of the hops disappeared, and the dry hopping had zero effect as the beer tasted very sweet. I have an idea about what happened between the first batch and the second batch from the same recipe, but would appreciate some input from everyone else.
I used two smack packs of 1056 Wyeast which I pitched to a starter a few days before I pitched it to the fermenter - so plenty of yeast.
As my brew kettle is only 29liters and can only comfortably handle 20-25 in a nice boil, I had two other pots going to reduce my wort down as I collected 31 liters of wort from my mash. I had to boil for 30-40 minutes to reduce the volume before I added any hops for the scheduled 90 min boil. I think this is where it all went wrong as I only added hops to the main brew kettle and probably caramelized the sugar in the post because of the long boil time - the two pots on the stove were on very high to reduce the wort down as quickly as possible. Does this make sense or am I missing something?
Is there any other information you need? to help answer this? The final product actually tastes quite good and would be perfect if I was trying to brew a barley wine, however I want to avoid this in the future so its important to understand what went wrong.
This was an all grain recipe, brewed with 7.2 kg of malt and 375 grams of hops (Magnum, Amarillo & Willamette). thanks for the help!