Please help, I screwed up...bad.

[bpound90]

So i got over adventurous and put too much "secret" ingredient in my first home brew ever. I put 1/4 cup of fresh sliced ginger root.It has been fermenting 1 day now,but after boiling the ginger taste was overwhelming. Can i dilute it with water,and when? Should i just mix it with another beer after it is done? Should i ferment longer? (i don't yet own a carboy).can i filter some of it out while bottling? thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Whattawort]

Assuming you're using a fermenter that can sit a while (carboy or bucket), I'd let it go for 2 weeks at least and taste again when you do a hydro sample. After it hits terminal gravity, you can let it sit longer in the primary or bottle and let it hang out for 3 weeks or so and let it mellow out in the bottle. You can't judge a beer's final profile this early. Time tends to heal most off flavors.

 

[HeadyKilowatt]

I wouldn't do anything at this point. You'll be surprised at how much the flavor will change during fermentation. If you don't have a carboy, just leave in in the fermenter for two or three weeks. If you get a carboy, rack it over after fermentation is done and let it sit a couple of weeks while you get another brew going!

 

[Braufessor]

Once your beer is fermenting, I don't know that you want to add water - that will just give you a watery/thin beer with low gravity. I guess, I would just let it go, let it ferment out for about 3 weeks total. Maybe get another bucket - just a 5 gallon one - and use it as a secondary and let it sit for another 4-6 weeks in that. Then, taste it. Probably, your best friend here is going to be time. Any kind of "spice" beer tends to mellow out over time. I have made some beers (pumpkin, christmas, maple) where the flavors were just overwhelming at first, but mellowed out over time and became quite drinkable. After you let it sit for the time in secondary, you will have to decide if you want to bottle. If it seems closer to something you want, bottle it - it will still continue to mellow out. If it is just horrible and you can't stand it, I would dump it and chalk it up to experience.

 

[starrfish]

What are you fermenting in? Hopefully a sealed plastic food grade bucket with an airlock. You are nowhere near ready after 1 day of fermenting!

Bottle in a few weeks. Ginger flavor should subdue with time. Way too early to be worried.
BUT i probably would not have boiled ginger... how long did you boil it for?

I would not dilute with water

Could you post your recipe and process, there may be bigger issues here than too much ginger.

 

[brycelarson]

that's a lot of ginger. Are the ginger chunks still in the beer?

 

[SleepyCreekBrews]

"relax , have a homebrew "
It'll likely mellow out a lot in the coming weeks...let it ride.

 

[mbauer013]

Yeah, this one is not really something you can undo, you just have to let it go full fermentation and bottle, and see how it is You might be surprised. If in the end it is really bad, you can find a beer it mixes well with when poured, but I wouldn't mix it before bottling. Brew and learn good sir, we have all had bad batches!

 

[DannyD]

I have a ginger beer recipe that calls for water,brown sugar, 6 slices of ginger root and yeast. Then you ferment it for a day or two and then decant the liquid and just top it up with water and sugar. What i found interesting is that the ginger flavour almost never faded from batch to batch, I would say take a 1/4 cup of your current brew and add it to the next for ginger flavour!!

 

[brycelarson]

One of the hardest lessons to learn in brewing is when to dump it.

I had a buddy that battled with an oxidized mead for almost a year - he had a million ideas for how to fix it. It took him all that time to come to grips that he just had to dump the terrible stuff.

Let this one finish fermenting, bottle it and try it over the course of a year. If it never gets good, well, then you just learned something.

 

[cooper]

One of the hardest lessons to learn in brewing is when to dump it.

I had a buddy that battled with an oxidized mead for almost a year - he had a million ideas for how to fix it. It took him all that time to come to grips that he just had to dump the terrible stuff.

Let this one finish fermenting, bottle it and try it over the course of a year. If it never gets good, well, then you just learned something.

I agree with Bryce on this one. We've all had batches that we either messed something up on for whatever reason or it just didn't turn out right. The best advice is to remember what you did, what you'll do next time, and proceed with business as usual in finishing the beer and see what happens.

I totally screwed up a BlkIPA that I did last January: I had 7 gallons of wort left over after boiling for 60 minutes (for a five gallon batch, don't know how that happened but it did) so in all my brilliance, instead of just putting 6 gallon in my primary and proceeding as usual with about a 1.050 beer, I decided that I would take out 2 gallon and boil it down for another hour to get to 6 gallons in my fermentor and see what happened, knowing that all those late addition hops were going to bitter things up a lot. It sat in the primary for 21 days OG at 1.084, and the secondary for 5 months. I bottled it and a month later it tasted like burnt coffee.. Not too bad but it's now been 9 months and its slowly starting to mellow out a little bit. I'll keep the rest till around Jan (one year after brew day) and see where we're at.

We all have days like this and we learn from them and experiment, sometimes it works out okay, sometimes not. Best of luck to you!

 

[brycelarson]

I recently dumped a second run small beer that I bumped the OG with molasses. It was poor to start and just kept getting worse as it aged. 1 year in I dumped the remaining bottles and filled them with something delicious.

 

[tnvol]

I agree with the suggestions above. Along with cleanliness, I think time is your best friend when it comes to home brew. Just my 2 cents based on past experience. Good luck! I hope your beer turns out the way you want it to!

 

[PistolaPete]

I think I've read that hop flavor can mellow out during peak fermentation and that's why people dry hop AFTER peak fermentation. The ginger will prob mellow out also. Just wait and relax and it will most likely be really good.

 

[danielbt]

A whole quarter cup of ginger?

I used two pounds of ginger in a 5 gallon brew, and people absolutely love it. It will certainly mellow, but you have to be patient. Why are you even opening your fermenter after a day?

All this talk of dumping the batch is far, far too premature.

 

[Onlooker]

Why are you even opening your fermenter after a day?

He said it smelled overwhelming after the boil. Not that he opened up the fermenter.

It's definitely too soon to tell how it will affect the finished beer. So just wait and see, and then if it's too strong you could brew the beer without the ginger and blend, or just wait a looong time to see how it does after months in the bottle.

Probably a good idea to hunt around HBT to see how much others have used for any "secret" ingredients , that way you're less likely to make a mistake that costs you a whole batch of beer. Or make a small batch to experiment first.

 

[brycelarson]

All this talk of dumping the batch is far, far too premature.

I did tell him to give it a year.

 

[Whattawort]

The thought of a drain dump makes me want to cry. If a beer you made is not pleasing to the palate, then there are other uses. I had an amber that I thought was ok (not something I would seek out often though), but no one else seemed to like it. That beer made for a fantastic marinade and de-glazing sauce and it was also decent when you wanted a beer and there was nothing else in the fridge.

 

[brycelarson]

The thought of a drain dump makes me want to cry. If a beer you made is not pleasing to the palate, then there are other uses. I had an amber that I thought was ok (not something I would seek out often though), but no one else seemed to like it. That beer made for a fantastic marinade and de-glazing sauce and it was also decent when you wanted a beer and there was nothing else in the fridge.

I don't cook with beer / wine I wouldn't drink - and at this point I have access to so much great local beer and a big enough pile of homebrew that it's not worth drinking things at home that I don't love.

 

[DonMagee]

If it's still too gingery after it is aged a bit, i'd brew a beer that would go good with ginger flavor and mix them.

 

[bpound90]

It turned out good...so far. Thanks so much for the input. I tasted it after 10 days while racking to secondary and the flavors were well balanced. I'll let you know how it finished.

 

[bpound90]

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