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You're the beery-godmother!!! haha! Thank you so much!! I'm going to exactly that!!! I will let you know how it goes!! :):bigmug:
 
KeizerBrewr said:
I get that! I enjoy building a recipe and trying it out when I've got left over ingredients. If your batches are seeming one note or meh, I recommend some specialty grains/malts. For a bohemian lager, I recommend Munich and Carapils, two ounces of each(if you're doing two gallon batches).
Mandarina Bavaria and Cascade can give you the orange/citrus flavors. Saaz hops are so nice for a bit of spice and when with Mandarina Bavaria, make for a lovely combo.
Briess makes Pilsen Light extract and find that makes many good styles of lighter beers. I just recently finished up my first "big beer", OG of 1.077, a lovely Belgian Golden Strong Ale. My very first ever batch was five gallons of a Bavarian Hefeweizen.
Don't ever get so down on yourself to think about dumping a beer before it's done. There's always something you can do to get a beer moving if it hasn't taken off or if it's stuck. Like Father Papazian once said, " Relax, don't worry, have a home brew".
If you're looking to get the gravity up, I would boil some water, making a starter of sorts, and then adding it to your fermenter. Sanitation is key, everything you touch or the wort comes in contact with needs a spray of Star San. If you ever need any help, feel free to reach out.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for these tips!! So are these speciality malts, extracts? I need to shop for my next few batches (planning ahead) so this is super helpful!! I've used a Richie's light DME, but I imagine it won't bring a lot to the beer given how different the wort looked/smelled! Yes.. I think I need to chill a bit! haha! I think now I've solved the refractometer reading mystery, I feel less confused and back in control! I'm going to top up the fermentor as suggested and hope for the best!! And I'll start planning the next brew... super exciting!!! :) Thanks again for taking the time to reply and share your tips and ideas!! :)
 
Eric and Keizer, just to update you!!

Checked on the beer this morning to find one of the carboys bubbling away nicely, and the other one is just getting started! Seems the yeast is waking up finally!

Today, I did as suggested - siphoned off 1/2 a litre from each, dissolved the extra malt extract, cooled and poured it carefully back in, and added a little extra yeast for good luck! An hour in, and it's going great! I'm even tempted to lager it once it settles?!

Thank you for the help here - I would have definitely chucked the lot, but now I might have some half drinkable beer!! ;)
 
Great work! Glad to hear the yeastie boys are getting to work. We can definitely talk about specialty malts/grains offline if you want. Sounds like you should still have a decent brew!
 
Hey!! So.. I decide to let it lager... so it's in my shed, keeping nice and cold!! :)

On another note, my lovely first IPA.. I made a 8 bottles... has become horribly sour!! The first bottle I opened was perfect, but a few weeks later and the other bottles taste terrible!! It took a long time to cool the wort, and that was similar to my batch of lager, so I'm a bit worried that my lager will meet a similar fate!!! :(

I was pretty hot on the sanitising.. but maybe not enough... how on earth do you make large batches and keep the beasties out?
 
rutheyrocks said:
On another note, my lovely first IPA.. I made a 8 bottles... has become horribly sour!!

I was pretty hot on the sanitising.. but maybe not enough... how on earth do you make large batches and keep the beasties out?
Click to expand...

Welcome to HBT. Sorry that your IPA went sour.
Are you using a sanitizer like Star-san or something equivalent? Also, each bottle needs to be inspected by holding it up to a bright light and looking through the opening, its not unusual to have debris in the bottom of bottles. If something isn't clean, it can't be sanitized.
I'm not sure if that's actually true, but that's the rule I go by. So all of your bottling gear has to be sanitized before use. Your clean bottles should be immersed in sanitizer, dumped out and then filled. The caps should be in a bowl of sanitizer until used. When you sanitize you siphon, keep it in the bucket of sanitizer until you are going to use it. Star-san can be used several times, I keep a 2.5 gallon bucket of the soulution ready all the time in case I need to sanitize something.
Everyone has their own bottling routine, but I would suggest watching some U-tube videos and see how others are doing it.
Slow chilling your beer isn't the problem, I mostly brew in the winter and just set the brewpot out in the cold and in the morning the wort is pitching temperature. In the summertime I do use an immersion chiller though.
 
Check a couple more bottles of the IPA.

If all the bottles are sour then the contamination occurred before bottling. It was in your fermentor or perhaps tubing that was used to get the beer into bottles but no particular concerns about the bottles themselves.

If some of the bottles are contaminated and others are not you need to work on you your process for cleaning and sanitizing the bottles.
 
madscientist451 said:
Welcome to HBT. Sorry that your IPA went sour.
Are you using a sanitizer like Star-san or something equivalent? Also, each bottle needs to be inspected by holding it up to a bright light and looking through the opening, its not unusual to have debris in the bottom of bottles. If something isn't clean, it can't be sanitized.
I'm not sure if that's actually true, but that's the rule I go by. So all of your bottling gear has to be sanitized before use. Your clean bottles should be immersed in sanitizer, dumped out and then filled. The caps should be in a bowl of sanitizer until used. When you sanitize you siphon, keep it in the bucket of sanitizer until you are going to use it. Star-san can be used several times, I keep a 2.5 gallon bucket of the soulution ready all the time in case I need to sanitize something.
Everyone has their own bottling routine, but I would suggest watching some U-tube videos and see how others are doing it.
Slow chilling your beer isn't the problem, I mostly brew in the winter and just set the brewpot out in the cold and in the morning the wort is pitching temperature. In the summertime I do use an immersion chiller though.
Click to expand...

HEy, that's good to know slow chilling of wort isn't the issue... I left mine pan with a lid on, out in the snow.. but because I was making lager, it took a long time to get down to the 10 degrees pitching temp! I think it probably is a problem with the bottles.. I didn't check for debris, despite washing them... and sanitising everything... but I think you're right.. this could be the issue. I'll try a few more and I'll know for sure whether or not this was a bottle issue or not! Such a shame... it has dented my confidence a bit! I think I need to get my hands on some Star San... the stuff I use needs to be diluted, perhaps I just wasn't thorough enough...
 
eric19312 said:
Check a couple more bottles of the IPA.

If all the bottles are sour then the contamination occurred before bottling. It was in your fermentor or perhaps tubing that was used to get the beer into bottles but no particular concerns about the bottles themselves.

If some of the bottles are contaminated and others are not you need to work on you your process for cleaning and sanitizing the bottles.
Click to expand...


Yes, I'll try a few more bottles - we had two good ones, and two awful ones.. the difference was a few weeks between drinking. fingers crossed my larger batch of 'lager' won't suffer the same fate!!!

I'm even more impressed by those who manage to do this on a larger scale.. I thought I was pretty careful!!

Thanks for the tips!! :)
 
rutheyrocks said:
Yes, I'll try a few more bottles - we had two good ones, and two awful ones.. the difference was a few weeks between drinking. fingers crossed my larger batch of 'lager' won't suffer the same fate!!!

I'm even more impressed by those who manage to do this on a larger scale.. I thought I was pretty careful!!

Thanks for the tips!! :)
Click to expand...

All the things you are working through are pretty much the same issues at the 5 gallon scale. Same work just more of it. Once you get it working right at 1 gallon scale you can surely go to larger scale -- if you want to -- and for now you are not spending a lot on ingredients on learning-curve batches.
 
rutheyrocks said:
I think I need to get my hands on some Star San... the stuff I use needs to be diluted, perhaps I just wasn't thorough enough...
Click to expand...

Star-san is also diluted, 1 oz for 5 gallons. A bottle brush comes in handy for cleaning your bottles, oxyclean works pretty good to get crap out. If they don't clean up really easily, I just recycle them, But if you are saving your own bottles from commercial beer, a good rinse with hot water immediately when you are done with the bottle is usually enough. If you are getting used bottles from someone else, they probably weren't rinsed out.
 
And don't let all of this stress you about brewing.
These are common problems, in time it will all come together. When you make a beer that amazes your friends and family, all the lessons you've learned will be in that bottle.
 
Sorry to hear about your IPA. If you think you've sanitized and cleaned enough, do it again. Doing the same thing every time with your sanitation regime is important. I sanitize all of my post boil tools/fermenter/airlock/stopper while my kettle is boiling. Then do it again while my wort is chilling(with the lid on) just to be sure. I know it's probably overkill, but if it's overkill, but works, it works. A spray bottle of prepared Star San is my savior, beats having to make 5 gallons. I still toss my airlock and stopper into a bowl with Star San to soak, but spray my stainless steel spoon, fermenter and associated components thoroughly with Star San. It's 1.5mL added to 32oz spray bottle. I use Brewer's Friend for building recipes and all of the other awesome stuff along with it. I spent the whatever, like $19 for a year(or something like that) to have unlimited recipes saved and it is fantastic. I recommend it! Hope all is well with your lager!
 

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