Simple Malt Extract recipe

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Now im om my first full 24 hours in the fermentor and it seems to be doing good. Im getting a bubble every 3 to 4 seconds. I just hope that its not bad with that horrible smell I had yesterday when I boiled. Please somebody reassure me or let me know if I have a problem with the smell.
 
Its now been 4 days and the bubbles have stoped. It smells like old spilled beer in a bar (smell through the air stop) and I dont know if its going to be any good. It kind of smells a little bit like spoiled fermented fruit. Somebody tell me if I have a bad batch on my hand or is it going to turn out okay?
 
Almost all my beers smell weird to me. Always makes me think of spoiled milk or something. They come out great though. The only one that smells good is my chocolate stout recipe. There's so much cocoa powder in that thing that the chocolate smell overpowers everything else going on in the fermenter.
 
Friday? Is that only 8 days in the Fermenter? I would give it at least another week (if not 2). On my first kit I bottled after 7 days, like the kit said to do, but I have found that leaving the beer in the 2 - 3 weeks before bottling is much better for the beer.

IMHO you should buy some good microbrews, think about your next brew, and wait until the following Friday.
 
It is only 2 1/2 gallons. I personally would like to wait but I troly have no idea what Im doing. Do you really think it would help make my batch better? If so than thats what Ill do. I really do hope my first batch comes out great but well see.
 
+1 on waiting until the following friday... or the friday after that. There are literally thousands of threads on this forum where expert brewers suggest that the longer you leave the beer in the fermenter, the better it will taste.
 
Thanks! Im going to leave it sit for another 2 weeks or until I cant wait anylonger. Im going to try to leave it bottled for at lest 3 weeks also. As soon as I bottle I want to do a Red Ale with a good taste of chocolate in there!!! Any suggestions would be great!
 
I suggest finding a beer recipe that you like and doing it over and over again until you "get it right". That way your variables are reduced and you can tell what effect your changes had without second guessing that they came from a change in recipes. You can identify problems in the final results and make adjustments accordingly. The simpler the recipe the easier this is to do. The recipe you started with is good for this learning process.
 
Thanks! Im going to leave it sit for another 2 weeks or until I cant wait anylonger. Im going to try to leave it bottled for at lest 3 weeks also. As soon as I bottle I want to do a Red Ale with a good taste of chocolate in there!!! Any suggestions would be great!

Uh oh, I think you are hooked! Glad to see you are taking the advice of some of these great guys/gals here on HBT as I have myself and it really pays off.

BTW, a decent thermometer at one of those "discount" tool shops may not be a bad idea(cheap digital for $6.00 at Harbor Freight tools)! Some yeasts are kind of sensitive to pitching/fermenting temps!

Keep brewing and keep us informed!!
 
Is that a floating thermometer? I have a Harbor Freight by the house. I think my next 2 major purchases is going to be a 6 gallon glass carboy and a propane burner for brewing. That might have to come before my next batch unfortunatly!!!!

Now back to this thermometer issue. Do I need a floating thermometer or does the digital ones work fine? Obviously I need something to withstand heat.
 
I have a floating thermo but I never use it(it came with my original kit). I just have a 6 inch digital thermo that I use. Of course I sanitize it when I use it post-boil!

I know it is not very long so when I use it for checking mash temps I have to stir the mash then I check several places to kind of "average out" the temp.
I use "fermometers" on my fermentors and even though they are not super accurate they give me an idea at what temp my beers are at!

I like Harbor Freight 'cause they are cheap!
I bought a digital and a dial(backup) for about 12 bucks and they work great!

These are things I've done and feel good about it but always read a little bit about what alot of us do to find your own path.

Glass carboy a good choice, propane burner also a good choice! I just got my propane burner(Bayou Classic SQ-14) love it love it!!!

Keep brewing!
 
A friend of mine recently made one of those prehopped canned kits from the grocery store. It tasted like band aids.... highly unrecommended :)

This could be an infection or poor rinsing after using bleach as a sanitizer. Maybe even from using chlorinated tap water in the beer and not boiling long enough to remove it. It could even be the yeast that was used.

I have had fantastic luck whipping up quick beers with Premier Malt Extract from my local mom-n-pop grocery. I have used extra hops, sugars, honey, and steeped grains in almost all of them. The only thing I would suggest is NOT using the yeast that comes with the can. I have had it quit before fermentation was complete and had to pitch a pack of Muntons yeast from another kit to finish up. I usually use safeale s-04 or us-05.

Search for 'premier mail extract' for more details
 
This could be an infection or poor rinsing after using bleach as a sanitizer. Maybe even from using chlorinated tap water in the beer and not boiling long enough to remove it. It could even be the yeast that was used.

I have had fantastic luck whipping up quick beers with Premier Malt Extract from my local mom-n-pop grocery. I have used extra hops, sugars, honey, and steeped grains in almost all of them. The only thing I would suggest is NOT using the yeast that comes with the can. I have had it quit before fermentation was complete and had to pitch a pack of Muntons yeast from another kit to finish up. I usually use safeale s-04 or us-05.

Search for 'premier mail extract' for more details

looks like I'm late to the party, as usual. Hope my info helps anyway...
 
What kind of digital thermometer are you using? Do you have a picture or anything like that? Also What the heck is a fermometer?
 
These are the two thermometers I use the most. I like the digital for its quick read times they are both about 6 inches long. Again, I know they are not long enough to reach into my mash/boil but a gentle stir and a sample of temp in a few spots gives me good results!

The "Fermometer" is stuck to my primary(with my Saturday Stout in it).
My thermometers were about 7 or 8 bucks, I can't remember, and the fermometer was about 3 bucks at one of my LHBS.
(nice thing about Portland, OR is there are at least 6 LHBS's within about 25 miles from me)!

Fermometers are not the most accurate but they give you a pretty good idea where your beer's temp is at. I usually check the temps about every other day or so since the volume of liquid in the fermentors can take a few days to acclimate to room temp. Although I notice a 3 or 4 degree increase while active fermentation is happening.

Beer photos.jpg


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Will the fermometer work on my plastic fermenting bucket just as good as on your glass carboy?
 
Will the fermometer work on my plastic fermenting bucket just as good as on your glass carboy?

Should work just fine! They are self-adhesive or you could just tape it to the side of your fermentor if you want to move it!

I should have put mine down to the 2.5 gallon mark though. If I have a batch come in a little low on volume then I may miss my fermometer altogether(not the red line in the photo).

Floating thermos are just fine too although they may get hard to read if they get all gunked up from krausen, that brown stuff that tends to form at the top of the fermentation!
 
Cool man. How important is the hydrometer? Can I make a few batchs without one? Or should that be a priority after my thermometer/fermometer?
 
Well, a hydrometer is only going to give you specific gravity or SG readings, which a measure of how much "sugars" are in the liquid. Final Gravity subracted from Original Gravity will tell you the alcohol content of you finished product.
It is not absolutely necessary to use a hydrometer but it can be helpful for reference.

I personally feel if given the choice I would have to go with a thermometer. Pitching temps for yeast can be critical. Once you pitch the yeast and they do their job you will get beer. The only science in beer is how critical you want to make your process, in my opinion. In the old days they didn't even have thermometers and still did pretty good.

Beer that you like is good beer and even better if you made it!
 
They are both important tools and important additions to your equipment.

In my brief experience, unless you do a full boil batch, OG is tough to measure accurately. The added water creates a layering effect and my readings have been typically low compared to my beer calculus estimations. I do think that it is still important to take an FG to see how well fermentation went compared to estimations.
 
They are both important tools and important additions to your equipment.

In my brief experience, unless you do a full boil batch, OG is tough to measure accurately. The added water creates a layering effect and my readings have been typically low compared to my beer calculus estimations. I do think that it is still important to take an FG to see how well fermentation went compared to estimations.

Do you take your OG before you pitch your yeast?

Any water that you may add, to make 5 gallons for example, should be well mixed before you take your gravity sample.

Liquid of different gravities will not mix easily on their own so before taking an OG make sure any water added pre-pitch, has been stirred well!
 
Hey WickedLB I dont guess you want to give up the recipe for your rye irish red do you?
 
I have only been in the bottle for a week and a half, but I love this one. Unfortunately I definitely missed my color. I need to change the name because it is really not red (haven't checked but SRM is more like 19 than 16 or 17). If you swap out the pale LME for 6 lbs of extra light LME you might have a red. Definitely not traditional, but I will make it again.

Here was my brew:

5.0 gallons
Original Gravity: 1.060 (1.053 to 1.062)
Final Gravity: 1.016 (1.014 to 1.017)
Color: 17° SRM (Dark Red/Brown)
Bitterness: 4.9 HBU 13.9 IBU
Alcohol: 5.9% A.B.V. 4.6% A.B.W.

Fermentables
6.4# Pale Malt Extract Syrup
0.75#American Crystal 60L
14oz Flaked Rye
0.5# Honey
5oz Roasted Barley
Hops
Bittering 1.5 oz East Kent Goldings

Yeast
Irish Ale (WLP004)
 
Now who makes the best LME? What is a good brand to go with? Im seeing Coopers all over the place. Is that like the McDonalds of Extract? I now have everything I need to get started minus the ingrediants so now thats the mode of my research Im in now. Thanks man!

Coopers actually makes a decent product. They're a real brewery in Australia and their hombrewing line, albeit very rudimentary, is of very good quality. You won't go wrong ordering your LME from them.
 
Do you take your OG before you pitch your yeast?

Any water that you may add, to make 5 gallons for example, should be well mixed before you take your gravity sample.

Liquid of different gravities will not mix easily on their own so before taking an OG make sure any water added pre-pitch, has been stirred well!

I've learned about the importance of mixing to get an good OG based on several batches, but I still know that the number is sometimes a bit off. When the carboy is really full, I am not sure getting an OG that matches calculation is worth risking contamination. The extracts have the sugars, there is no Mash efficiency to figure out, I have just come to accept that the dilution makes the OG reading less reliable. On my patch of Milk & Oatmeal Stout, the best reading I could get was 1.034 when it was supposed to be 1.060 based on the recipe. I searched HBT and found out that others have struggled with getting accurate OG reading on diluted extract brews, so not to worry, the water and wort will eventually mix themselves while the yeast do their thing. I might have made myself crazy if I felt like I had to mix till my actual gravity matched my predicted calculation.

For my last batch I tried taking a BG (like Palmer does in his book) and then calculating OG from there based on a dilution factor. I think that this is a nice approach for those of us who are not yet doing full boils.
 
The extracts have the sugars, there is no Mash efficiency to figure out, I have just come to accept that the dilution makes the OG reading less reliable. On my patch of Milk & Oatmeal Stout, the best reading I could get was 1.034 when it was supposed to be 1.060 based on the recipe.

Wow, that is very bizarre! How the heck can that be? Like you said, you've got the sugars, it should be simple math once you add X amount of water to X amount of sugars(in solution) and viola.

Seems like just when I think I am learning something about brewing(of which I know so little anyway) I get completely floored by something completely new! I love this stuff!!

Well, I guess all that matters is you are getting good beer!!

Happy brewing!
 
bring 2gal water to a boil, remove from heat, add
6# Wheat DME
return to boil, add
1oz Holletau
boil 1 hour
move pot to the sink, fill sink with ice to cool
pour into fermenter, top off to 5gal, pitch
1pack dry Wheat Ale yeast

There you have a taste Heffeweizen
 
HEY HHEEEYYY!!!! I finally bottled my beer today. I think its going to turn out great. I did have a little settement in it in a few beers but thats okay I hope. Most were already clear! Im going to change it up for my next batch. 6 Gallon carboy to a secondary to a bottling bucket!!!! But I need to get a few things before all that. OH HURRY UP TAX RETURN!!!!!!!
 
Congrats.. Don't think you need a secondary but the more experienced guys will chime in more 'bout that.

+1 on the tax return thing lol..
 
I know I dont really need a secondary but I have a feeling it will make a clearer better looking beer. That definatly is not my priority, the burner for boils and carboy are the priorties for now. I do have a recipe I want to try that is going to require steeping grains and all and plus I cant get a good roiling boil off my stove. Im pumped! so far my first brew is going good!!!
 
+1 on not needing a secondary. I use my carboy as a second fermenter so I can have 2 batches going at a time!

Use some irish moss the last 15 minutes of your boil and use good technique with your racking cane when transferring to the bottling bucket and you will get very clear beer.

Congrats Rob and let us know hoe it tastes in 3 weeks! :tank:
 
YAY!! Im going get a few things today for my next batch! Im going get my digital thermometer and my thermometer for my Carboy! I got a propane burner yesterday for my next batch. Next is my carboy and my stuff to clean and sanatize that!!!!!!!! I also need to get my plug for carboy and a blow off tube(just in case) and then Ill get my ingrediants! I should be boiling in anouther week or two!!!!!
 
YAY!! Im going get a few things today for my next batch! Im going get my digital thermometer and my thermometer for my Carboy! I got a propane burner yesterday for my next batch. Next is my carboy and my stuff to clean and sanatize that!!!!!!!! I also need to get my plug for carboy and a blow off tube(just in case) and then Ill get my ingrediants! I should be boiling in anouther week or two!!!!!

Oh no, it has begun! (the obsession):)
Looks like all is going well for you Rob, congrats!
 
Don't do it...don't succumb to the gadgetry.....yet. Just brew another basic batch the same way. Spend the money you would blow on a carboy with shipping and buy a couple of ale kits instead.

Oh, do get the Irish Moss....great stuff.
 
HAHAHAHA I just drank my first home brew!!!!!! It wasnt the best beer Ive ever had but its up there!!!!!!!! I love it!!!!!! Im double hooked now!!!!!!!!! Ill post pics on my face book tomorow when I dring 2 more! My email is [email protected] if you want to find me on facebook. My lifetime supporter is coming later to post pics!
 
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