I did a partial-mash six gallon brown ale kit on Saturday. Came with (just guesstimating) five pounds of grains, seven pounds of light LME and Windsor yeast. The instructions to these kits say to put the grains in 2 gallons of 150 degree water for 30 minutes; strain the grains out, add the LME and hops, boil for 55 minutes, add the finishing hops and boil for five more minutes. When the wort cools appropriately after adding what was boiled to the appropriate amount of water to make 6 gallons, hydrate the yeast with a tbsp. of dextrose in 1/2 cup water then pitch.
I might have gotten cocky. After reading lots on HBT I thought it was silly not to rinse the grains after straining, so I did. I captured the water from that then boiled more like 3 gallons (had to split into two pots, one with about two gallons and one with about three. I "eyeballed" the LME between the pots 2/3 to 1/3). After that I proceeded as normal. Strained the wort into my primary then used an ice bath to cool to about 72 degrees before pitching. Measured OG at 1.040 before pitching. I was perhaps a quart over the 6 gallon mark.
Got what appeared to be a nice (but not overly vigorous) fermentation going within a day, by yesterday (Monday) it was doing very little and the SG was down to 1.016. Today it was at 1.013 and I don't expect much more to happen.
According to a site calculating alcohol content for me, if the SG on this beer does not drop further it will be 3.5% ABV. So my question is should I just take my lumps and hope this turns out to be a great brown ale that just doesn't have a very high ABV? Or is there a way I can try to get fermentation going again with another yeast to try to get down to about 1.005 which would give me 4.6% ABV? After my description can anyone identify anything that went wrong with this process? Was it dumb to deviate from the instructions by going with a bigger boil?
I might have gotten cocky. After reading lots on HBT I thought it was silly not to rinse the grains after straining, so I did. I captured the water from that then boiled more like 3 gallons (had to split into two pots, one with about two gallons and one with about three. I "eyeballed" the LME between the pots 2/3 to 1/3). After that I proceeded as normal. Strained the wort into my primary then used an ice bath to cool to about 72 degrees before pitching. Measured OG at 1.040 before pitching. I was perhaps a quart over the 6 gallon mark.
Got what appeared to be a nice (but not overly vigorous) fermentation going within a day, by yesterday (Monday) it was doing very little and the SG was down to 1.016. Today it was at 1.013 and I don't expect much more to happen.
According to a site calculating alcohol content for me, if the SG on this beer does not drop further it will be 3.5% ABV. So my question is should I just take my lumps and hope this turns out to be a great brown ale that just doesn't have a very high ABV? Or is there a way I can try to get fermentation going again with another yeast to try to get down to about 1.005 which would give me 4.6% ABV? After my description can anyone identify anything that went wrong with this process? Was it dumb to deviate from the instructions by going with a bigger boil?