My first brew day gone wrong. Help me figure out what happened and the outcome

[linusstick]

Here's the recipe I used to a T
Malt:
6.6 lb Light LME
3 lb Golden DME
Grains:
1 lb Caramel 80L
8 oz Victory
4 oz Carapils
Hops:
2oz Chinook (11.2) 60 Min
2oz Centennial (10.0) 20 Min
3oz Columbus (14.4) 5 Min
Yeast:
WLP01- CA Ale

2.5 gallons of water heated to 155. Steeped grains for 20 minutes. Brought to a boil and added all extracts. Boiled 60 minutes. Did the above hop schedule. When I got the wort cooled to 70 I dumped it into the fermenter. Instead of the wort being liquid as in my past beers (this is my first bigger beer), the wort was a clumpy sludge. Disappointed, I topped the fermenter off to 5 gallons. I took an OG reading and instead of the 1.08 the recipe called for, it was 1.03. Even with the wort being sludge. So I turned the brewpot upside down and let some more of the sludge fall into the wort. Stirred it up and got the OG to 1.04. I pitched the yeast and put the fermenter away feeling defeated. To make matters worse, my when I poured my starter into the beer, alot of the slurry was stuck to the bottom of the flask. Now the second part of this is what should I expect of the outcome? 1.04 is way off the target, but can I at least expect a drinkable IPA instead of IIPA? What went wrong? I guess I should've taken gravity readings as I was adding water, but I figured with that thick sludge that there was no way that was going to even get to 1.08

 

[Suthrncomfrt1884]

Was the wort sludge or was it the hops and break material you were seeing?

 

[linusstick]

Was the wort sludge or was it the hops and break material you were seeing?

The wort was sludge. It was barely liquid going into the fermenter

 

[norsk]

Was your water volume for the 60 min. boil 2.5 gal?

 

[norsk]

Sounds like it was too thick of a mixture to begin with. Boiling 2.5 gal for 60 mins. with what you added may make something...beer pudding comes to mind...but not beer.

 

[linusstick]

Was your water volume for the 60 min. boil 2.5 gal?

Yes it was. It was a Brewers Best kit. I added 4oz of hops because I got some feedback saying the beer wasn't going to be very hoppy. I'm thinking I should've used more water because of the additional hops.

 

[norsk]

Was it liquid extract or dry?

 

[hudsonj6]

Here's the recipe I used to a T
Malt:
6.6 lb Light LME
3 lb Golden DME

More liquid than dry but I've not experience using liquid.

 

[lumpher]

did you use whole hops or pellet hops? whole hops absorb a lot more water. add that into the fact that you added extra, and there's sludge.

norsk "Was it liquid extract or dry?":
- 6.6 lb Light LME - liquid malt extract - comes in 1.1 or 3.3 lb cans
3 lb Golden DME - dry malt extract - comes in 1 or 3 lb bags

decent way to tell is the weight, if they don't specify dme or lme

 

[rearview]

I don't see the word "stir" anywhere. Did you stir in the extract? If not, the dme possibly clumped and never dissolved and the lme possibly burned on the button of the pot.

 

[optimatored]

boil some water for 15min to sterilize and dump it in... maybe like 0.5gal or so and shake it up like mad!! (cool the liquid of course)

 

[norsk]

So 2.5 gal of water and 6.6 lbs. of LME (which is what....less than a gal.) So about 3 1/4 gal of liquid with 3 lbs. of DME and 7 oz of hops added. After a 60 min. boil you ended up with probably 2 gal of sludge...sounds about right. Sounds like just to thick of a mixture for the ingredients to do their thing. Now...if I had a dollar for every time I messed up....

 

[linusstick]

I don't see the word "stir" anywhere. Did you stir in the extract? If not, the dme possibly clumped and never dissolved and the lme possibly burned on the button of the pot.

I didn't get that detailed. My girlfriend poured the DME and LME as I stirred constantly

 

[linusstick]

boil some water for 15min to sterilize and dump it in... maybe like 0.5gal or so and shake it up like mad!! (cool the liquid of course)

Won't do any good given the fact that after I added water I was at an OG of 1.04 instead of 1.08. At this point I don't think I want less of an OG

 

[optimatored]

Won't do any good given the fact that after I added water I was at an OG of 1.04 instead of 1.08. At this point I don't think I want less of an OG

i re-read... you topped off to 5 gallons... how much? it is very hard to get an accurate OG when topping off with water unless you mix mix mix.

 

[mewithstewpid]

Lol at too thick of a mixture. It all dissolves. I've added this much before in 2.5 and it was fine.


How old was the extract? I'm not sure about this, but ,aybe expired lme could do this

Also did you stir vigorously after you topped up in the fermentor? If it's not mixed properly you could get the funky readings. Especially since you said you added a little, stirred, and it increased. That makes me think it wasn't mixed properly is all.

 

[mewithstewpid]

And just to further confirm that it wasn't too much extract, I just did a gulden draak clone. 10lb lme, 4lb dme. 2 gallon boil. No problems with slugginess( after dme was mixed of course)

Are you sure it wasn't just trub going into thenfermentor that made it appear like sludge?