safe to raise Alc % and what about too many transfers? Thanks!!!

[stoneyrok]

Hi, I am new to brewing and very excited! I have my first batch going now but it is a true brew octoberfest, just so I can learn the basics first. I figured a kit was the best first step to take although I know it will not be as good as future brews. I think this is going to result in a low alcohol content since my specific gravity was 1.030 beginning. The box said it should be 1.040 to 1.042 starting. If I want to raise the alcohol content a little, is it safe to add more sugar when the primary fermentation is over? What should I add if I want to also capture a little more malt or full flavor? If I do this will there be enough yeast left over to make sure I get the carbonation I want when I bottle it or does the yeast keep living and eating? From the kit I have a 5 gallon bucket fermenting now which started last night (Saturday late night).

Also, I started in a glass carboy, but this morning, it was spewing over, so I had to transfer it to my brew bucket. I guess my plans are to rack it over to the carboy after fermentation slowly to avoid getting too much oxygen in it, and the add the primer, the siphon it slowly back to the bottling bucket. I will use a bottle filler to fill them up. Is this too much transferring?

Thank you all very much!!!!

 

[ChshreCat]

One sentence says you want to take it easy and learn the basics first, then two sentences later you're wanting to dump sugar in it to boost the alcohol. Step back from the carboy. Leave it be and see how it turns out. Next time, pick a higher alcohol kit to work with. Just learn the process right now. If it comes out wrong, you won't know if it's something in your process or the extra sugar that messed it up.

As for transferring, you want to wait until fermentation is complete before you transfer it to secondary. Or you can just leave it in primary.

When it comes bottling time, dissolve your priming sugar in a small amount of water, pour that into your bottling bucket and then rack your beer onto the sugar. If you stir it in to the beer in the carboy, you're going to stir up what you've settled out.

 

[stoneyrok]

thanks, yes I do tend to try to learn the basics, and step it up a notch. You described me well..LOL I work in Information Services, and when I fix something, I usually do two or three things at one time, and don't know exactly what I did to fix the problem, but I know it was one of the steps, and the other two were not harmful, so it usually takes me longer to narrow down the problem if it recurs over and over... although I will get it.. OK, I will step back, chill, rack it to the carboy slowly, clean the bottling bucket, rack it back over there, add the sugar, and bottle it up.
thanks!

 

[ChshreCat]

Good man. Except, sugar in the bucket first, then rack onto it. The swirling action of racking will make sure it's mixed properly.

 

[stoneyrok]

I will add the sugar water first and swirl/rack back into the bottling bucket like you said. thanks again.

So, I pitched the yeast to the carboy Sat night 10-23 around midnight and fermentation ended last night, only 24 hours. It was fast and vigorous. I put yeast in at about 92 degrees, so that is partly why. Also, when the carboy started to overflow Sunday morning, I removed the stopper, there was a build up of pressure and hops shot right out of the carboy onto my ceiling LOL.. BUT now I am wondering if there was possibly yeast in that glob of hops that shot out. It was about 1/2 a baseball size that came out, was green and bitter, so I figured it was the hops. If so, then there are two reasons I figure fermentation ended so fast, one, additional yeast came out, or two, it fermented faster around the 90 degree range...

 

[Revvy]

More than likely your beer wasn't 1.030 despite what your reading says. I don't think many kits these days have a starting og that low....the gravity is really what the recipe said it should be.

It's a pretty common issue for ANYONE topping off with water in the fermenter (and that includes partial mashes, extract or all grain revcipes) to have an error in reading the OG...In fact, it is actually nearly impossible to mix the wort and the top off water in a way to get an accurate OG reading...

Brewers get a low reading if they get more of the top off water than the wort, conversely they get a higher number if they grabbed more of the extract than the top off water in their sample.

When I am doing an extract with grain recipe I make sure to stir for a minimum of 5 minutes (whipping up a froth to aerate as well) before I draw a grav sample and pitch my yeast....It really is an effort to integrate the wort with the top off water...This is a fairly common new brewer issue we get on here...unless you under or over topped off or the final volume for the kit was 5 gallons and you topped off to 5.5, then the issue, sorry to say, is "operator error"

If your target volume was correct, then it will be fine.

More than likely your true OG is really what it's supposed to be. And it will mix itself fine during fermentation.