Just did my first partial I have a question....

[EcuPirate07]

Ok I was all excited and didnt read the directions well enough and it said to start with 5qts and steep the malt for an hr well I ended up steeping 4 gallons for an hour and then sparging with 1 gallon. Then I added the 4lbs of Malt extract 45mins into the boil to give it a light color since im brewing a blonde ale. Is this going to throw off the taste of the beer, and not be as "malty"? I mean 5 gallons is 5 gallons is 5 gallons but I didnt know if it being so deluted would matter or not. I just want to be reasured everything will be fine.

 

[BlindLemonLars]

How much grain were you mashing? Typically, you want to use 1.25 to 1.5 quarts of water to each pound of grain. If you use too much water, you'll dilute the diastatic enzymes and get poor efficiency.

Don't sweat it...you'll still get the color and flavor contributions from your grains, but you probably won't recover as much fermentable sugar as the recipe expects. But at 5 quarts of water, it sounds like the bulk of fermentables in the recipe are from extract...so it will still be "beer," it just won't be as strong as you expected. Finish brewing the batch, drink it down (I bet it will still taste good!) and consider it a learning experience.

 

[Schnitzengiggle]

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[EcuPirate07]

How much grain were you mashing? Typically, you want to use 1.25 to 1.5 quarts of water to each pound of grain. If you use too much water, you'll dilute the diastatic enzymes and get poor efficiency.

Don't sweat it...you'll still get the color and flavor contributions from your grains, but you probably won't recover as much fermentable sugar as the recipe expects. But at 5 quarts of water, it sounds like the bulk of fermentables in the recipe are from extract...so it will still be "beer," it just won't be as strong as you expected. Finish brewing the batch, drink it down (I bet it will still taste good!) and consider it a learning experience.

it was 4lbs of grain

 

[EcuPirate07]

I havent pitched my yeast yet, is it worth it for should I just go to the LHB store and just redo it?

 

[Joos]

probably a tasty very low abv. beer.Good for the spring time right?

 

[BlindLemonLars]

My advice would be to pitch the yeast AND go to the LHBS...to buy ingredients for your next batch!

The first batch should be a nice session beer.

 

[EcuPirate07]

cool thanks guys!

 

[EcuPirate07]

just did my starting gravity, came to 1.05 so that should yeild about 6% ABV shouldnt it?

 

[ericm]

1.050 will probably be closer to 5%, but where exactly will depend on the FG. sounds like you didn't do that bad for efficiency though.

 

[EcuPirate07]

1.050 will probably be closer to 5%, but where exactly will depend on the FG. sounds like you didn't do that bad for efficiency though.

Yeah, lets hope