New to Homebrew!!

[rutheyrocks]

Welcome along. Sounds like you’re on a good start.
I wouldn’t give up on your lager yet. It may not have the ABV you’re looking for. But I bet it’ll still turn out good. Plus it’ll give ya some practice in the lagering process

Hey! Thank you!!

Do you think I can brew something that weak?? Is it possible?? Should I chuck a load of carb drops in there to give the yeast a little more to work with perhaps??

 

[rutheyrocks]

Don't dump the beer. Get more carboys.

Looks to me like you have the research skills and the capacity to problem solve. Now, all you need is more brewing time.

I love this advice... more carboys!!!!

 

[eric19312]

So not sure where you really ended up. Did you add any more DME or still just the original 570 grams? What is the current volume of fermenting beer in your carboy?

There is a super low gravity beer style called Table Beer. You could probably add just a little bit more boiled and cooled DME to your fermentor to get into the expected starting gravity range for Table Beer. No need to bother with a full lager fermentation, it is surely going to ferment to completion very quickly and you can probably start warming it up to finish as soon as you see some airlock activity. Taking it to completion will give you the opportunity to work through the bottling process. Who knows it might even turn out drinkable or even good.

 

[HectorJ]

haha! Thank you for the super helpful recommendations... funny you mention the first book... my mind is already turning to 'how on earth do they do this on an industrial scale, or even a microbrewery scale?'

There are a lot of different ways of producing as a microbrewery, one example is a 3 vessel Sudhaus (Hot Liquor Tank, Mash/Lauter Tun, Kettel), or a 5 vessel Sudhaus (Hot liquor tank, Cold Liquor tank, Mash tun, Lauter tun, Kettle), plus pumps, hoses, stainless tubing and large stainless fermenters.

Why not contact a local Microbrewery and see if they do tours? It's a great inspiration to get into and keep brewing


Industrial scales varies by technology and size, most of which is 99.99% automated and controlled by someone sitting in a room, clicking on buttons on a screen.

For instance, some large breweries will use mash filters instead of the Lauter tun, which looks like this:

 

[HectorJ]

Hey! Thank you!!

Do you think I can brew something that weak?? Is it possible?? Should I chuck a load of carb drops in there to give the yeast a little more to work with perhaps??

Adding only sugar will make the beer more alcoholic, but will not bring anything in terms of flavour or body to the beer (meaning it'll be thin and alcoholic).

If you want to go that route, it would likely be cheaper to purchase some dextrose (aka Priming Sugar / Corn Sugar).

I would do what Eric said, boil and cool more DME wort (maybe a bit more concentrated) and add it to your pre-existing wort/beer (if possible).

 

[rutheyrocks]

So not sure where you really ended up. Did you add any more DME or still just the original 570 grams? What is the current volume of fermenting beer in your carboy?

There is a super low gravity beer style called Table Beer. You could probably add just a little bit more boiled and cooled DME to your fermentor to get into the expected starting gravity range for Table Beer. No need to bother with a full lager fermentation, it is surely going to ferment to completion very quickly and you can probably start warming it up to finish as soon as you see some airlock activity. Taking it to completion will give you the opportunity to work through the bottling process. Who knows it might even turn out drinkable or even good.

Hey there,

I diluted the beer by a third, to get the correct (10% BRIX) reading on my refractometer... so doing a quick calc, I probably have 190g of DME in my 5 litre carboy. I just checked out table beer (I didn't realise, but Kernal Table beer is one of my faves!) and it has an ABV of at least 3%, so I need to add in about 280g of DME to get the sugar concentration back up to a reasonable level....

Do you think adding at this stage might introduce contamination? I guess things have been kept quite cold due to the lager yeast that I've used... so maybe the risk is low...

Thanks again for all the advice!!

 

[rutheyrocks]

There are a lot of different ways of producing as a microbrewery, one example is a 3 vessel Sudhaus (Hot Liquor Tank, Mash/Lauter Tun, Kettel), or a 5 vessel Sudhaus (Hot liquor tank, Cold Liquor tank, Mash tun, Lauter tun, Kettle), plus pumps, hoses, stainless tubing and large stainless fermenters.

Why not contact a local Microbrewery and see if they do tours? It's a great inspiration to get into and keep brewing


Industrial scales varies by technology and size, most of which is 99.99% automated and controlled by someone sitting in a room, clicking on buttons on a screen.

For instance, some large breweries will use mash filters instead of the Lauter tun, which looks like this:

View attachment 717894

That looks a lot like some of the back of house station plant rooms I've been working in! No lovely copper stills though.. !!

So.. I was lucky enough to do a few tours of some whisky distilleries in Scotland... the ones I saw were fairly small scaled and looked quite old fashioned.. in a really charming way! So I guess I have witnessed a fairly industrial scale beer making process, which is what it is before they distill the alcohol from it...

 

[rutheyrocks]

Hey there,

I diluted the beer by a third, to get the correct (10% BRIX) reading on my refractometer... so doing a quick calc, I probably have 190g of DME in my 5 litre carboy. I just checked out table beer (I didn't realise, but Kernal Table beer is one of my faves!) and it has an ABV of at least 3%, so I need to add in about 280g of DME to get the sugar concentration back up to a reasonable level....

Do you think adding at this stage might introduce contamination? I guess things have been kept quite cold due to the lager yeast that I've used... so maybe the risk is low...

Thanks again for all the advice!!

Also.. I need to dilute my DME before adding, which makes the calc a little bit complicated... hmmm.. perhaps I'll just go for it anyway!!! If it's going to be quite a quick ferment, now that I'm not lager-ing, then there's not much to lose!!

 

[KeizerBrewr]

Hey!! Thank you for the link... the more the merrier!!! Some great advice around getting fermentation started! Thank you! Stupidly, I was only one successful home brew in, of a tiny 1 gallon batch of IPA. I'm a huge lager fan, so just thought it would be a case of different ingredients, not such a wildly different process.. I only realised this as I started! Temp control has been easy because it's nice and cold and I'm only doing a small batch (2 gallons) but my problem has been down to faulty equipment.. I put too much trust in my refractometer sadly (which I calibrated with distilled water) But mistakes, I'm realising, are what make us better.. so I'm going to take it on the chin!! haha!

I haven't used grain this time - just a Barley DME, because I'm a little bit lazy and want to focus on hops and yeast and process.. however, what I notice is that the wort was a little characterless.. it lacked warmth (in it's scent, if that makes sense?) so I might even switch to partial mash... I bought lager yeasts (Bohemia and Bavaria) and I bought myself some First Gold, Boadicea and Mandarina hops... I seem to lean towards orangey/spicy flavours... !! I was hoping to create a lager with some caramel, orangey, spicy aromas! I'm not even sure if this is a thing in the world of lager... so I'm just following my heart on this! I'm terrible at following recipes.. I like to bend the rules a bit where possible!! But I appreciate yeast and temperatures are not to be messed with!!

What have your successes been?

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.

 

[eric19312]

Hey there,

I diluted the beer by a third, to get the correct (10% BRIX) reading on my refractometer... so doing a quick calc, I probably have 190g of DME in my 5 litre carboy. I just checked out table beer (I didn't realise, but Kernal Table beer is one of my faves!) and it has an ABV of at least 3%, so I need to add in about 280g of DME to get the sugar concentration back up to a reasonable level....

Do you think adding at this stage might introduce contamination? I guess things have been kept quite cold due to the lager yeast that I've used... so maybe the risk is low...

Thanks again for all the advice!!

OK so I am reading you dumped 2/3 of your 5L fermentor down the drain, added water to what was left, reboiled, chilled and pitched the yeast so you have about 5L of wort with original gravity of 1.014.

I think you would be fine taking about 1/2 Liter out of the fermentor, heat and dissolve 190 grams DME into that. Warming that mixture up to about 180 to to pasteurize the DME, boiling is not really necessary at this point. Then chill and return to the fermentor. You will kill a bit of your yeast but will have plenty left in keep the fermentation going. Your calculated original gravity for this batch would be 1.029 and you would expect to end up around 1.008 for a beer about 2.7% alcohol.

 

[rutheyrocks]

You're the beery-godmother!!! haha! Thank you so much!! I'm going to exactly that!!! I will let you know how it goes!!

 

[rutheyrocks]

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.

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!!

 

[rutheyrocks]

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!!

 

[KeizerBrewr]

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!

 

[KeizerBrewr]

What's the word @rutheyrocks ?

 

[rutheyrocks]

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?

 

[Beermeister32]

Here is the Brewers Friend total recipe builder calculator. I think you will find it hugely useful in building recipes and calculating ingredients:

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator

 

[Beermeister32]

If it has soured, you have a bacteria infection. Make sure everything is sanitized with Star-San or similar at bottling time.

 

[madscientist451]

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?

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.

 

[eric19312]

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.

 

[rutheyrocks]

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.

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...

 

[rutheyrocks]

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.

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]

Here is the Brewers Friend total recipe builder calculator. I think you will find it hugely useful in building recipes and calculating ingredients:

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator

Lovely!! Thank you for this!!

 

[eric19312]

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!!

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.

 

[madscientist451]

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...

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.

 

[JohnSand]

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.

 

[KeizerBrewr]

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!

 

[KeizerBrewr]

What's the words bird?