My first was a Shiner clone-(*partial mash)

[TomHanx]

So me and a couple of buds after some very short consideration (about a minute maybe?) and two days of intensive youtube and google scowering decided we want to brew some buur. Just really wanted to post about the experiance to keep a log on it. I did have a couple questions though...

I wanted to do something lighter like an American Lager, but quickly realized this wasn't going to happen for the first time. Mikey wanted something dark and heavy and Shane wanted something light- so with out having still decided what were gonna brew, headed off to Homebrew Headquarters in Richardson and settled on a Shiner clone.

This is our completley first brew and I wanted to go all grain with no interest really in extract but we didn't want to have to buy all the equipment necessary up front and rather than wait we got some and did a partial mash. Also we don't have a fermintation chamber and couldn't therefore brew a real lager, we used a dry ale yeast that was a neutral in flavor as possible.

*Almost done. Hopefully all is well in 3 weeks or so

Followed the reciped to a t-

My only two questions on the whole process were:

1)I'm pretty sure it's ok but did I leave my yeast out too long? we started sanitizing everything then boiling the water and went to prep the yeast. Put the packet with warm water in a cup at 10:00 pm. Realized we didn't have a thermometer so went to wal-mart - took about 30 mins. then after the hour long boil and cooling I'd say it sat out for probably almost 2 hours before we finally mixed it.

2)When adding the grains to the strike water- directions called for heating h20 to 169- add grains and it should drop down to 158. How long does this take to cool down, I thought it would be very short around 10-30 seconds or less. But it didn't actually for a couple of mins. It stayed at 169 for awhile.

 

[TomHanx]

Apologize about the length of the post, I'm just super pumped like all the fist in Jersey pumping at once.

 

[beerkrump]

Congrats on the brew.

1) Yeast is fine.

2) The temperature change is dependent upon the temperature and mass of the two objects being mixed. It usually takes a few minutes for it to stabilize.

You have a recipe so we can see what you made?

 

[EllisTX]

Congrats on the brew. Everything sounds like it will be fine. I did a Shiner Clone for my second batch and I let fermentation temps go nuts. I just gave up on it last week and dumped the keg. I tried to lager before I had the equipment. I'd like to try it again. Keep us posted.

 

[TomHanx]

keep in mind I wanted a lager but with out the equipment i wasn't even going to try it so not sure how this is going to turn out...

Shiner Bock Clone
This is what it should be but the fermenting kit we bought didn't have a hydrometer or anything to measure the gravity. So we'll assume we did it close to this and hope it works out this way- but could clearly be way off if we messed up.
OG = 1.039-1.043
FG = 1.010
ABV = 4.3%

-2.8 lbs light liquid malt extract
-1.9 lbs brewers corn syrup (the guy at the store recommended corn sugar. so we used 1.5 lbs of dextrose instead)
-.25 lbs 6 row pale malt
- 1 lb munich malt
- .66 lbs crystal malt
- .75 oz roasted barley
- 4.62 AAU Brewer's Gold hops
- 1 tsp irish moss
- 1/8 tsp of yeast nutrient
- Mexican lager or European lager II yeast (but we used Safale US-05 dry ale yeast per there recommendation)

For later
- 7/8 corn syrup for priming (which I have to read up on my bottling)

 

[astropunk]

Ya brewed some buur!! :rockin:

Dont worry about the yeast, it'll do fine!

 

[TomHanx]

QUESTION
We don't have enough bottles to get this bottled (we have like 7, need like 45 more or so), and it's done fermenting as best as I can tell. Bubbles are far and few between and it's been two weeks since we started it, I want to get this either bottled or into another fermenting chamber asap to avoid the yeast cake putting off flavors in the beer.

Can I just use one of those 5 gallon buckets from like Home Depot or lowes? The only place I know that sales "food grade" buckets in the area is way out of the way. If i just got a 5 gallon bucket and lid could i sanitize it and get the beer in there?

 

[Gwitz]

Yeast cake giving off flavors is a fairly big misconception. It matters for the big brewerys and thats where the myth comes from, but not for such small batches that homebrewers do. So if you can stick ur batch in a fridge or really cool place its fine to stay on the cake for a long time. I do 10 gallon batches usually in 5 gallon carboys, ill keg the first 5gs and leave the other 5gs to age, and ussually im lazy and leave it on the cake, and every time the second half has tasted better than the first. Sometimes its up to 2 months before i get to it as well.

Also, i wouldnt recommend using those plastic buckets. I know the buckets your talking about, i store my grain in them, wouldnt trust them one bit for liquids to be consumed.

 

[heckels]

Check your local grocer's bakery for food grade buckets, they're normally willing to part with some. But yeah, I wouldn't worry about the yeast cake that much. A month or two should be fine.

 

[TomHanx]

Check your local grocer's bakery for food grade buckets, they're normally willing to part with some. But yeah, I wouldn't worry about the yeast cake that much. A month or two should be fine.

ok. thanks
just thought i needed to get it taken care of asap but not paying outrageous prices for brand new bottles. been meaning to pick some up off craigslist but just hadn't had the time

 

[TomHanx]

Alright home boys. Here it is... my very first ever

 

[TomHanx]

we bottled 4 bottles last night in the grolsch style bottles and put the rest in a secondary fermenting tank (really only b/c we didn't have enough bottles and didn't want to leave it on the yeast cake too long. been about 3 weeks which may not be but didn't want to chance it)

Tried it- obviously it was hard to judge b/c it hasn't been carbonated and that makes it taste really different. However, it didn’t seem to have a whole lot of flavor. The strongest I could detect was wheat. Didn't seem to have much hops flavor to it. also didn't seem very strong alcohol wise BUT I was tired as hell last night and only going off like 2 hrs sleep from the previous night so maybe my taste was thrown.
anyways- Im still pumped

 

[TomHanx]

Question:
We're doing the bottling tonight. The beer came out a bit lighter in flavor than I would prefer, would dry hopping impart any flavor or is that strictly for aroma?

I'm thinking I may bottle 12-18 as is and then dry hop the remaining amount to see the differance...

 

[TomHanx]

Ok another question that prob wont get answered but we'll see...
just for the hell of it we opened one saturday to see try how they were coming along. and i'm pretty sure it's ruined. not sure if all of them are but the one we did open is.

The beer was very acidic. in fact it was bordering on battery acid or something. i didn't do a PH litmus test but after taking a small swig almost immediatly you could taste it. after a min or so it almost started to burn the toungue and tingled. The only thing i can think of is we didn't sanitize the caps and it got infected. the first four bottles however were grolsche style bottles and the whole thing was sanitized. im waiting til tuesday to pop that open. pending i do and it taste alright.

Did it get infected? what kind of infection cause the beer to become acidic??

 

[Zixxer10R]

How long was it in the bottles?