Need some expertise (is my beer alcoholic?!)

[brewdog69]

Hey all,

Just bottled my first batch of homebrew and I am pretty scared that I royally messed up somewhere in the process.

I went all grain for my first batch (jumped into the fire) and I followed this recipe pretty accurately, but have a few questions ultimately around the question of whether or not my beer is alcoholic and here's why (in reverse order) and mainly because I have no original reading since i dropped the hydrometer on brew day:

• When bottling, I noticed no 'cake' or any real activity it seemed in the fermentation bucket. Just some hop particles at the bottom and on the side. The smell was fantastic but I am worried it could just be hops lol. The taste was pleasant but, as expected, very flat and seemingly very dry.
• On day 4 or so of fermentation, it looked as if the airlock was bubbling every 15 seconds or so, and I was pretty happy, but that was really the only action I saw, occasionally bubbling before and after.
• I bottled on day 14 of fermentation
• My final gravity when bottling was 1.002, which apparently means i am a god and created very alcoholic beer on the first try, or more likely something went wrong. again **********I have no original reading since i dropped the hydrometer on brew day***********.
• My wort seemed to have extracted lots from the grain, but I did add top off water to reach a full 5 gallons since I was doing stovetop and only had a 5 gallon pot so I basically did 2.5 ('a concentrated boil') and added 2.5 into the fermenter which people said was okay to do.
• When i dumped my yeast, i did not shake it or warm it up. All videos just had people ripping it open and dumping, but apparently, mine was a slap/rest/warm up/then pour....which i was pretty mad about after already pitched in when I realized.

So with all that said, is there any way with the final reading of 1.002, and a reasonable guess as to what my OG might have been with my 2.5 gallon wort extraction with the recipe ingredients listed above, to what my abv or alcohol content might be. I do not have a refractometer and only have this final gravity reading. Help! Thanks.

 

[IslandLizard]

Did you use crushed malt/grain?
What temperature did you mash at and for how long?
Did you taste the wort after the boil?

 

[CascadesBrewer]

There would really be no way for anybody to determine your OG. I am not aware of anyway to determine ABV (outside of a lab). Given the low FG, I would not be surprised if your OG was lower than you planned. If you tasted your wort before fermentation it should have been fairly sweet at that time, and much less sweet now. Worse case is this was a good learning experience. Hopefully you end up with some tasty brews!

 

[brewdog69]

i did not *taste* the wort but it did smell sweet.

the recipe i followed had an og of 1.060 and I used the same ingredient list and temperatures (granted i was stove top so i was kinda playing with flames up/down as temperature required, but i kept a very hovering hand over it)...might have been a little hot if i had a guess but the plan was mash at 150* for 1hr.

I milled all my ingredients at the homebrew shop so everything was prepped accordingly.

i'll wait and see after the carb over the next 2-3 weeks but yes, im walking away with great experience either way.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Using a refractometer and hydrometer, you can get a crude estimate of your ABV without an OG measurement. If your hydrometer is giving a FG reading of 1.002, and you hit your expected OG (1.060), a refractometer should give a FG reading of about 1.024 (or 6 brix) due to the effect of the alcohol present. That would give an alcohol content of about 7.7%. However, to finish at 1.002 with that yeast, I strongly suspect you missed your OG by a fair margin.

 

[brewdog69]

So, if i missed my OG, what are some reasons why and what should i look to do to remedy for next time?

If i mash and get some good wort, and add in extra .5lb or lb of sugar, boil, and pitch yeast, where is my error to cause such a low OG?

Also, any guesses as to the "worst" case scenario? If I mashed with the 12lbs of grain listed in the recipe at 150-170*F (Im giving a high mashing temp for worst case scenario)...and i boil for 75 mins with another .5lb of turbinado sugar added (low end for worst case), and pitch in hops post boil at 180* or so....whats the guess for worst case OG? I see lots of things on websites to calculate OG or efficiency etc but I have no idea how to do them or what they mean really....anyone have a worst case for me? best case is a 7% beer i guess.

 

[Soulshine2]

Hey all,

Just bottled my first batch of homebrew and I am pretty scared that I royally messed up somewhere in the process.

I went all grain for my first batch (jumped into the fire) and I followed this recipe pretty accurately, but have a few questions ultimately around the question of whether or not my beer is alcoholic and here's why (in reverse order) and mainly because I have no original reading since i dropped the hydrometer on brew day:

• When bottling, I noticed no 'cake' or any real activity it seemed in the fermentation bucket. Just some hop particles at the bottom and on the side. The smell was fantastic but I am worried it could just be hops lol. The taste was pleasant but, as expected, very flat and seemingly very dry.
• On day 4 or so of fermentation, it looked as if the airlock was bubbling every 15 seconds or so, and I was pretty happy, but that was really the only action I saw, occasionally bubbling before and after.
• I bottled on day 14 of fermentation
• My final gravity when bottling was 1.002, which apparently means i am a god and created very alcoholic beer on the first try, or more likely something went wrong. again **********I have no original reading since i dropped the hydrometer on brew day***********.
• My wort seemed to have extracted lots from the grain, but I did add top off water to reach a full 5 gallons since I was doing stovetop and only had a 5 gallon pot so I basically did 2.5 ('a concentrated boil') and added 2.5 into the fermenter which people said was okay to do.
• When i dumped my yeast, i did not shake it or warm it up. All videos just had people ripping it open and dumping, but apparently, mine was a slap/rest/warm up/then pour....which i was pretty mad about after already pitched in when I realized.

So with all that said, is there any way with the final reading of 1.002, and a reasonable guess as to what my OG might have been with my 2.5 gallon wort extraction with the recipe ingredients listed above, to what my abv or alcohol content might be. I do not have a refractometer and only have this final gravity reading. Help! Thanks.

Hard to say what your OG was.
You added water after it was boiled? You just diluted it,and added unboiled water to a sterile environment.
Day 4 you had airlock bubbles ,so you do have some degree of alcohol content .
Day 14 you bottled and know your FG is 1.002, must have bought a replacement hydrometer? Did you calibrate it?
Your yeast pitch ,so you used a smack pack. If you smacked it and waited it out , it did fine. If you ripped it open without smacking it , it didn't get the yeast nutrient in the pack ( reason for smacking it) . I did this once as well, dumped the nutrient in after I realized it didnt burst inside the pack. I had to repitch 3 days later with a different dry but started yeast and it ended up fine. BUT, I have no way of knowing which yeast worked. Since then ,I use only dry yeast .
Chances are you made beer, but also learned something .
So, going from an unknown OG and diluting it 50/50 with plain water to a FG of 1.002 .I'm going to guess that since in its recipe it should have come in low at 6% and high of 8.5%abv. But since you diluted it ,you have maybe a 3-4% abv but its hard to say, if anything its now a session beer. Not a total loss,right?. It might not have all the flavor and kick you expect but its still drinkable. .You'd have been better off letting it go as 2.5 gallons undiluted.
what (and how much)did you use to prime it before bottling?
Have you tried it yet or is it still conditioning?

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Worst case, although unlikely, is that you didn't get any conversion in the mash. You seem very vague about your mash temp - you'll struggle with AG brewing if you can't control your mash temp. I'm thinking you probably mashed cooler than you thought, giving a more fermentable wort. I suspect you had poor efficiency, somewhere around 50%, due to the reduced boil (which would have meant a very limited sparge). I would guess that your OG was somewhere around 1.040 which would give you a very dry 5% beer - a session IPA.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

You'd have been better off letting it go as 2.5 gallons undiluted.

I think the OP is saying they used the grain for the full 5 gallon batch, but only boiled 2.5 gallons then diluted to 5 gallons. This is OK to do as long as you adjust hops (more needed as extraction of bitterness is affected by the higher sugar wort) and efficiency (sucks, due to the lack of sparging).

 

[bigdawg86]

You sure your LBS milled your grains? You brew shop may have collected the ingredients for you, but lots of people don't grind their grains until brewday to keep it fresh. Was there husks, broken up grain, and some flour present at the bottom of the bag? To little crush will screw your efficiency. No crush you just made colored water.

Water has a gravity at 1.000, yours finished just above that at 1.002. I have seen threads where when people have forgotten their crush end up with similar results.

What yeast did you use?

Nobody will be able to estimate anything as you really did a type of beer that would be very difficult to do stove top and there are a ton of variables. Did you brew in a bag? You should have sparged a at lease 5.5-6 gallons total volume. If you only sparged 2-3 gallons then topped it off with fresh water to your full volume then you would foreseeable only have roughly half of your intended gravity. I almost feel like you brewed it like you would an extract with with steeping grains, concentrated boil, top off to final volume.

 

[Soulshine2]

Evaluate and take inventory of your equipment before you take on another brew.
Make sure you have or get the bare essentials before proceeding.
go back and read beginner brewing folder.
Printed instructions
kettles
bag(BIAB method)
*extract(extract brewing)
Hydrometer(calibrate it at 60*F)
thermometer(glass floater)
mash tun with lid(and insulated)
timer.
priming sugar

 

[Soulshine2]

I think the OP is saying they used the grain for the full 5 gallon batch, but only boiled 2.5 gallons then diluted to 5 gallons. This is OK to do as long as you adjust hops (more needed as extraction of bitterness is affected by the higher sugar wort) and efficiency (sucks, due to the lack of sparging).

understood, but with the other vagueness of OPs procedure, its too hard to tell.
You may be correct.

 

[IslandLizard]

i did not *taste* the wort but it did smell sweet.

You can't smell sweetness, you can only taste it. You may have smelled malt and hop aromas, instead.

A38: TEMP: 64-74F, 18-23C // FLOCCULATION: MEDIUM // ATTENUATION: 72-76%
Using the Imperial A38 Juice yeast from that recipe, and an OG of 1.060, the expected FG would be around 1.014-16 and an ABV of around 6%.
The possible lowest limit may be 1.012 under certain conditions.
The yeast also requires much higher wort oxygenation than most yeasts, 20-25 ppm of Dissolved O2 (DO). You did none.

Any of these are far from the 1.002 you measured (if you measured correctly), hence the OG must have been way lower.
How much lower?
I put some numbers in a fermentation/alcohol calculator:
1.010 OG at 80% yeast attenuation gives us an FG of 1.002 (what you measured) and ~1% alcohol. That's closer to water than it is to beer.

Since you diluted your kettle wort 1:1 with water in the fermenter, you must have had 1.020 OG wort after the boil, which means some things are very wrong. You either overheated your mash and denatured the enzymes and/or left a lot of sugars behind in the wet grains.

I can recommend you buy a copy of John Palmer's How to Brew 4th Ed. and read it. The best $20 you'll ever spend in brewing.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

YIf you only sparged 2-3 gallons then topped it off with fresh water to your full volume then you would foreseeable only have roughly half of your intended gravity.

No.
I would estimate about two-thirds (maybe more) of the intended gravity. Remember that wort becomes progressively less concentrated through the run-off/sparge. The first 3 gallons has a lot more sugar than the next 3 gallons.

This method is quite acceptable. There's nothing wrong with topping up with water, providing the loss of efficiency and hop utilisation is accounted for.

 

[bigdawg86]

No.
I would estimate about two-thirds (maybe more) of the intended gravity. Remember that wort becomes progressively less concentrated through the run-off/sparge. The first 3 gallons has a lot more sugar than the next 3 gallons.

This method is quite acceptable. There's nothing wrong with topping up with water, providing the loss of efficiency and hop utilisation is accounted for.

I guess the spirit of my comment would be that topping off with water almost 1:1 will still have big effect on gravity, unless used WAY more grains to get a more concentrated wort. 12lbs is not enough to make a wort concentrated enough to top off 1:1 and still meet gravity. I routinely top off with water if I have more boil off than expected, but it's nowhere near to what he described.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Y
The possible lowest limit may be 1.012 under certain conditions.

1.010 OG at 80% yeast attenuation gives us an FG of 1.002 (what you measured) and ~1% alcohol. That's closer to water than it is to beer.

That's forgetting that sugar was added, which will ferment 100% regardless of the attenuation of the yeast. OP said 0.5 to 1lb. That means somewhere around 5 to 10 gravity points from the sugar addition, fermenting to below 1.000. Accounting for that, OG was more likely in the 1.020 to 1.040 range.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

I guess the spirit of my comment would be that topping off with water almost 1:1 will still have big effect on gravity, unless used WAY more grains to get a more concentrated wort. 12lbs is not enough to make a wort concentrated enough to top off 1:1 and still meet gravity. I routinely top off with water if I have more boil off than expected, but it's nowhere near to what he described.

Yes, it will have a big effect on gravity. It depends on the system, but about 50% more grain would be reasonable. 12lbs is not enough to make a concentrated wort, unless using a highly efficient BIAB system with a strong squeeze.

 

[IslandLizard]

You sure your LBS milled your grains?

The grains must have been milled or he would have had an OG of ... .... ... 1.000!

 

[brewdog69]

hey i know i jumped into the fire! i have a 'northern brewer kit' on deck, but this was an xmas gift and i wanted to mess around. i would either learn a lot or make a great beer or both.

anyways, to answer some of the hate (jk i appreciate all the help really, i am still learning!).

I "steeped the 12lb of grain in a mesh bag" in my mash tun at 150* or so for 60 mins. i then drained this and collected more sparge for about 15 mins or 20 mins. then i poured it back into my mash tun to raise the volume. of the 2.5 gallons i started with, i had probably 2.25 after recollecting sparge (some spilled). Throughout the entire 60 mins i was placing a THERMOMETER in various places of the mash tun to get readings from each side in case they differed. i kept the average at 150 for the whole hour. i was tired by the end

Then...i started the boil. i threw in the sparge and extra sugar as it was ready, and boiled for 75 mins. trying not to get it over 212, but with the same method as before, measuring the heat in different 'corners' of the mash tun, and adjusting the heat to keep it 195-212 as best i could as i saw ''gentle rolling boils are best" so i errored on side of too low than 240*....

then...after it cooled to 180* on average in the "4 corners" of the mash tun, i did my hopping. i used the full amount of hops called for.

then... ice bath in sink. when the "4 corners" were at pitching temp, i took it out, and pitched yeast.

-somewhere in here i added my 2.5 gallons of ~*PuRiFiEd*~and therefore sterile water to reach my top off 5+ gallons.

YES my first mistake was not smacking the bag, stupidly, just trusted vids where you sterilize and pitch the contents. i then saw the second bag and said oh **** and ripped it and pitched. not great i know.

Then i dropped my hydrometer (yes i got a replacement as i have leraned the vitalness of one) and it shattered everywhere lol. not fun but i was grinding!

i aerated the yeast and """""beer""""" and then locked her up and placed the sterilized airlock. i hope this is less vague!

 

[brewdog69]

...also im out here grinding a one br apt in chicago on a stovetop! trying to pay off my loans baby! if i had the space and money for equipment i would but ya boy is just trying! and not to do extract

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Hmmm. I'm a bit confused. See notes and comments below.

I "steeped the 12lb of grain in a mesh bag" in my mash tun at 150* or so for 60 mins.

You actually mashed. If you use base grain (grains with enzymes) in the (approximately) 140 to 162 range, you are mashing (it's basically steeping with enzyme activity). Steeping is when you soak non-enzymatic grains to get flavour out (as in extract + steeped specialty grain).

i then drained this and collected more sparge for about 15 mins or 20 mins. then i poured it back into my mash tun to raise the volume.

I have no idea what you are talking about here. Why are you trying to raise the volume of your mash tun? Why would you pour wort back in to your mash tun? You should have drained your mash tun (into your boil kettle), then added more water to your mash tun, given it a good stir, and drained again into your mash tun (assuming you are batch sparging). Continue until you have your pre-boil volume.

of the 2.5 gallons i started with, i had probably 2.25 after recollecting sparge (some spilled). Throughout the entire 60 mins i was placing a THERMOMETER in various places of the mash tun to get readings from each side in case they differed. i kept the average at 150 for the whole hour. i was tired by the end

As you've noticed, it's hard to get consistent temperature across the entire grain bed. Choose a place to take you measurement and stick with it. That will allow for repeatability and adjustments on future batches.

Then...i started the boil. i threw in the sparge and extra sugar as it was ready, and boiled for 75 mins. trying not to get it over 212, but with the same method as before, measuring the heat in different 'corners' of the mash tun, and adjusting the heat to keep it 195-212 as best i could as i saw ''gentle rolling boils are best" so i errored on side of too low than 240*....

Depending on air pressure, boil intensity doesn't affect boil temperature (not that we can measure, anyway). A light boil and vigorous boil will both be at 212F - the extra energy input for the vigorous boil is transferred to change the phase of water from liquid to gas - this takes energy even though both are at 212F. Adjust your boil intensity visually - I aim for a low rolling boil, some prefer a more aggressive boil.

then...after it cooled to 180* on average in the "4 corners" of the mash tun, i did my hopping. i used the full amount of hops called for.

then... ice bath in sink. when the "4 corners" were at pitching temp, i took it out, and pitched yeast.

-somewhere in here i added my 2.5 gallons of ~*PuRiFiEd*~and therefore sterile water to reach my top off 5+ gallons.

OK.


Hope this helps.

 

[bigdawg86]

I know you said you don't want to do extract brewing, but honestly I think you should. Yes you can start all grain, but will stuggle with your setup. With extract you can brew good beer in a small apartment. I did about 12 extract batches before going to all grain. I learned ALOT and refined my process with extract so that when I switched to all grain it was a breeze. Just a thought. Start with the basics, learn, and move up from their. Also a hydrometer is VITAL, but I would also recommend a refractometer. Just takes 1-2 drops of wort to get a reliable original gravity. I particularly like the refractometer because I can take gravity readings throughout the boil and boil longer or add extract or sugar if I miss my gravity (you can't use a hydrometer with boiling hot wort). I only use my hydrometer for a final OG after wort is chilled to 60°.

 

[IslandLizard]

If you set your mind to it, read up on all-grain brewing, understand the different processes and parameters involved, you can brew all-grain successfully.

Here is an old, online version of How to Brew. Although some is a little outdated, the processes are still pretty much the same and that site will shine some light on them. There are tons of resources online, including here. Read the stickies on top of each forum!

But... you also need the right equipment. Since partial boils are a big waste with all-grain, you need to do full boils. Therefore you'd need an 8 gallon, or better yet, a 10 gallon kettle to brew 5-6 gallon all-grain batches AND a heating source that can boil that volume!

If you're stuck for now with a 4 or 5 gallon kettle, do 2-3 gallon batches, the right way, Brew-in-a-Bag mashing followed by a full boil after lifting the bag out of the kettle.

Brew 2 of them or 2 different recipes back to back to save on prep and cleanup time and still get 4-6 gallons.

Be inventive, if you're boiling on the kitchen stove use multiple pots, combine at the end in the fermenter.

 

[Soulshine2]

"brewdog69 said: ↑
then...after it cooled to 180* on average in the "4 corners" of the mash tun, i did my hopping. i used the full amount of hops called for.

then... ice bath in sink. when the "4 corners" were at pitching temp, i took it out, and pitched yeast."

This part confused me. Did you hop in your mash tun? You are supposed to hop during the boil or dry hop in the fermenter.
Im beginning to wonder what you read before you started this brew.
the process is fairly simple-
besides gathering your (sanitized)equipment and ingredients.
heat water
add heated water to mash tun and stir in milled grains
allow to rest at temperature for around 60 mins
sparge and drain all to boil kettle to achieve preboil volume
bring to boil ( start time for hop additions once it has actually started boiling,not when you turn on the heat)
add hops at their respective times LEFT in boil.
add whirlfloc /immersion chiller 10-15 mins before end of boil
chill do to under 80*F
transfer to carboy /fermenter while trying not to transfer too much trub
pitch yeast when temperature is within yeast working range

 

[Sard Brew]

drink some see if it tastes like booze

 

[beernutz]

then...after it cooled to 180* on average in the "4 corners" of the mash tun, i did my hopping. i used the full amount of hops called for.

YES my first mistake was not smacking the bag, stupidly, just trusted vids where you sterilize and pitch the contents. i then saw the second bag and said oh poopy and ripped it and pitched. not great i know.

When you write 'called for' that makes me assume you were following a recipe. Can you post it? Did it specify that your hops should not be boiled but rather added after the boil?

What was the manufacturer and type of the yeast "bags" you used?

 

[Homergah]

Dam, I'm confused. Just checked my calender, it's not April 2nd.

 

[IslandLizard]

When you write 'called for' that makes me assume you were following a recipe. Can you post it? Did it specify that your hops should not be boiled but rather added after the boil?

What was the manufacturer and type of the yeast "bags" you used?

You're coming late to the party, where were you when we needed you?

I know, it's all a bit confusing, we're slowly getting it unraveled.
The OP's phrasing, terminology, process, and/or his process descriptions can use improvement too, so we can actually communicate, using the same (brewer's) language.

It's the Beginners Forum, so we're cutting him a break and trying to help getting him on track and brew beer.

He did post the recipe in his OP:
https://www.clawhammersupply.com/blogs/moonshine-still-blog/juicy-neipa-new-england-ipa-recipe

From what I gather, as he said, he followed that recipe closely. If so, he would have used Imperial Yeast Ale Juice A38. I posted the specs and gravity predictions of that earlier.

Reading his yeast "dumping" method, he may have left half or more of the yeast in the bottom of the pack. There are instructions printed on the back of each Imperial Ale yeast pack, and their website is very informative. There is no mention of "slapping" the pack, it needs to be shaken and kneaded to get the settled slurry into suspension, before pitching.

 

[grampamark]

Man makes barley tea; breaks hydrometer. Oh, also, used PuRiFiEd water. Had to look that one up.

Turns out that PuRiFiEd water is Unicorn pee which has been blessed by as many angels as can dance on the head of a pin, plus one, and then filtered through the foreskin of a Sasquatch. Ask for it by name.

 

[brewdog69]

man yall hoity for some brewers!

let me try to not confuse you once again.

Big 5 gallon pot is all i have. it is metal. i placed this on the stove top in the apartment. there may be lead in our water for all u suburban daddies in their garages, so i used PuRiFiEd water, just trying to watch my health

i placed 2.5 gallons into the 5 gallon pot ("mash tun") so that i could do my mash. sorry if my wording is wrong here. i placed my 12lbs of milled (yes it was milled) grains and ""adjuncts"" into a mesh bag and mashed at 150* for 60 mins. once it was 60:00 mins, i removed the bag and placed a smaller pot in the sink and put the mesh bag into this pot (slightly hovering) to collect water-that-collected-in-the-grains-and-so-i-had-them-dripped-out-of-the-mesh-bag-into-the-second-pot (sparge unless again, i am wrong). meanwhile, the rest of the WORT is still in 5 gallon pot (mash pot) on the stove. it is now becoming my boil kettle!!!!

once the smaller pot had collected the sparge, or the drippings-into-small-pot-from-bag-of-grains-and-adjuncts, i placed this back into the WORT and boil kettle. skrrrrrrrrrrt. now the mash tun is my boil kettle. hope thats ok boys!

discard grains, next time i will donate them but i didnt know at first what to do

turn up heat on stove to boil wort. recipe which i posted in the first post, called for sugar adding into the wort at 15 mins into the 75 min boil. after boiling for 15 mins i tossed in the sugar. boiled for the rest of the 75 mins (60 more mins).

(sterilizing equipment while this all happens like my siphon and my airlock etc)

turned off heat and then when it got down to 180* i threw in my hops <<<again as called for in the recipe after the boil>>>. when it eventually cooled to pitching temp,i siphoned it from the boil kettle into my fermentation bucket. then i pitched the yeast called for in the recipe. wyeast london fog or something. Yeast Ale A38 for everyone who after this post will be like 'oh OP never said the specific yeast' even though i posted the link to the recipe. anyways. pitched it.

yes, i broke the hydrometer taking it out of the little cozy snug tube it came in. i forgot to also tell you all that i am human. i make mistakes! maybe thats why im not as good as you gods :/

anyways, i capped the fermentation bucket and aerated for 1-2 mins by shaking it. placed my airlock. put it in a dark closet around 65-70 degrees.

i opened it 4 days later to dry hop, and again 4 days after that for second dry hop, as said in the recipe,,,again. then waited another week or so to bottle, and posted the original question. i really, truly, hope this is enough of a process as not outlined word for word in the video attached to the recipe i linked ("what did OP read, what did OP do, why did OP not study"---i followed the video and instructions to a T the best I could....) now you can stop calling me vague. damn!