cms
Well-Known Member
I'll start off by saying that I'm NOT worrying and AM relaxing.
I, like about a million other people, got a kit as an xmas gift and recently brewed and bottled my first batch.
On the fateful brew day, I got a very late start (not realizing just how long it would take), was already tired and about halfway through, was sweating out a pretty bad fever (later found out that I had strep). So there are my excuses for what I'm about to admit to.
So I got an ingredient kit with all the stuff my wife got at the homebrew shop - Brewers Best German Altbier. I read the instructions probably a hundred times before I started and felt pretty prepared. Here are the mistakes that I made...
Steeped the grain bag and then brought to a boil VERY slowly. For some reason, I didn't want to overshoot 'boiling' or something. So I inched up the stove slowly and it took, of course, FOREVER to finally get a light boil. Once it started the light boil (I was sick at this point) I added the bittering hops instead of the cans of malt extract. After 15 minutes, I realized that I forgot the malt and dumped it in. The boil stopped and took a little while to catch back up but I let it boil for the remaining time that it was supposed to boil (so the malt boiled about 15 minutes less that it was supposed to and the hops boiled 15 minutes more than they were supposed to). Then I added the flavoring hops, finished the boil and then set my brew pot in a sink filled with ice water. I stirred the wort from time to time to try and cool it but while it was still quite hot, I dropped my hot thermometer (a glass candy thermometer..Lame, huh) into the ice water and shattered. So I left the wort in the pot for a while longer, filled my primary with a couple gals of cool (maybe too warm) tap water and then siphoned the wort from the kettle into the bucket. I felt the outside of the bucket (no more thermometer at this point) and it felt really hot still. So I waited and stirred and waited and stirred. I took a hydrometer reading and it was much lower than the instructions said it should be (later, I decided that the liquid was about 90-ish degrees and mentally adjusted to a 'normal' OG based on a calc I saw online to adjust for temp.) Eventually, I estimated that the temp was about right (In hindsight, I think it was still too hot) and pitched the packet of yeast. The instructions said to stir it in so I did. Then I snapped on the lid and added the airlock filled with tap water and then sloshed the bucket downstairs, noticed that I now had yellow water in the airlock, rinsed it out with tap water and put it back in. Then I waited a couple days - no bubbles in the airlock. In fact, it looked like the water was on the wrong side of the "S" - like it was trying to suck the water into the bucket (hence my suspicion that the wort was still too hot). A couple days later, I opened the lid and peeked. The top of the wort looked like flat beer - no bubbles or evidence of previous bubbled. I put the lid back on and read some blogs about re-pitching yeast. The night (or maybe it was the next day), the airlock started going nuts. Lots of bubbles. It bubbled like that for a few days and then started slowing down. I waited until the bubbles slowed to about 1 per minute and then siphoned into a sterile glass carboy, bunged and airlocked. The hydrometer reading showed that it had gone down quite a bit. I noted the value and waited. After a while, the beer in the carboy stopped producing bubbles and just looked flat. A few hydrometer reading indicated that it was finished doing what it was doing so I bottled.
On bottling day, I boiled the priming sugar from the kit and while it was boiling, I siphoned the beer into the bottling bucket - then I realized that I was supposed to add beer on top of sugar. Whoops. So I poured in the priming sugar and then gently stirred to make sure it was distributed. Then bottled and moved the bottles to a guest room shower. I filled 43 bottles from the 5 gallon batch. So there was some loss of liquid that I hadn't expected. Some went to hydro samples, but I wonder where the rest went. I filled the fermenting bucket up to the 5 gallon mark on brew day.
Anyway, after 5 days, I moved one bottle to the fridge and the day after, tasted it. It smells just like beer. in fact, it smells fantastic! It had some (very little) fizz in the bottle, looked like cloudy beer in the glass and even managed a thin little head that vanished after 30 seconds. Green beer that still needs more time - no biggie, right? Then I had a taste. It tasted exactly like the beer I had been extracting using the thief for the hydro readings (I drank all the hydro samples). Starts malty-sweet, then turns quite bitter. I managed to finish the glass and decided it just needs more time (that was very young, I know).
So after all that explanation, I have a couple questions.
What affect will the hops-before malt mixup have on the final taste?
Does it sound like fermentation went okay? It started quite late but seemed to do okay once it got started (the crust in the primary was almost to the lid - a sign of a lot of vigorous activity, right?) I worry (I know -I said I wasn't worrying...) that either the airlock rinse, the peek under the lid, etc. may have invited some wild yeast - and maybe the heat killed the ale yeast and I fermented with just wild yeast.
What affect will the beer before sugar snafu have on the final taste/condition?
Will this beer likely be viable after it's conditioned and aged properly?
Sorry for the long post - not sure what bits are relevant.
I, like about a million other people, got a kit as an xmas gift and recently brewed and bottled my first batch.
On the fateful brew day, I got a very late start (not realizing just how long it would take), was already tired and about halfway through, was sweating out a pretty bad fever (later found out that I had strep). So there are my excuses for what I'm about to admit to.
So I got an ingredient kit with all the stuff my wife got at the homebrew shop - Brewers Best German Altbier. I read the instructions probably a hundred times before I started and felt pretty prepared. Here are the mistakes that I made...
Steeped the grain bag and then brought to a boil VERY slowly. For some reason, I didn't want to overshoot 'boiling' or something. So I inched up the stove slowly and it took, of course, FOREVER to finally get a light boil. Once it started the light boil (I was sick at this point) I added the bittering hops instead of the cans of malt extract. After 15 minutes, I realized that I forgot the malt and dumped it in. The boil stopped and took a little while to catch back up but I let it boil for the remaining time that it was supposed to boil (so the malt boiled about 15 minutes less that it was supposed to and the hops boiled 15 minutes more than they were supposed to). Then I added the flavoring hops, finished the boil and then set my brew pot in a sink filled with ice water. I stirred the wort from time to time to try and cool it but while it was still quite hot, I dropped my hot thermometer (a glass candy thermometer..Lame, huh) into the ice water and shattered. So I left the wort in the pot for a while longer, filled my primary with a couple gals of cool (maybe too warm) tap water and then siphoned the wort from the kettle into the bucket. I felt the outside of the bucket (no more thermometer at this point) and it felt really hot still. So I waited and stirred and waited and stirred. I took a hydrometer reading and it was much lower than the instructions said it should be (later, I decided that the liquid was about 90-ish degrees and mentally adjusted to a 'normal' OG based on a calc I saw online to adjust for temp.) Eventually, I estimated that the temp was about right (In hindsight, I think it was still too hot) and pitched the packet of yeast. The instructions said to stir it in so I did. Then I snapped on the lid and added the airlock filled with tap water and then sloshed the bucket downstairs, noticed that I now had yellow water in the airlock, rinsed it out with tap water and put it back in. Then I waited a couple days - no bubbles in the airlock. In fact, it looked like the water was on the wrong side of the "S" - like it was trying to suck the water into the bucket (hence my suspicion that the wort was still too hot). A couple days later, I opened the lid and peeked. The top of the wort looked like flat beer - no bubbles or evidence of previous bubbled. I put the lid back on and read some blogs about re-pitching yeast. The night (or maybe it was the next day), the airlock started going nuts. Lots of bubbles. It bubbled like that for a few days and then started slowing down. I waited until the bubbles slowed to about 1 per minute and then siphoned into a sterile glass carboy, bunged and airlocked. The hydrometer reading showed that it had gone down quite a bit. I noted the value and waited. After a while, the beer in the carboy stopped producing bubbles and just looked flat. A few hydrometer reading indicated that it was finished doing what it was doing so I bottled.
On bottling day, I boiled the priming sugar from the kit and while it was boiling, I siphoned the beer into the bottling bucket - then I realized that I was supposed to add beer on top of sugar. Whoops. So I poured in the priming sugar and then gently stirred to make sure it was distributed. Then bottled and moved the bottles to a guest room shower. I filled 43 bottles from the 5 gallon batch. So there was some loss of liquid that I hadn't expected. Some went to hydro samples, but I wonder where the rest went. I filled the fermenting bucket up to the 5 gallon mark on brew day.
Anyway, after 5 days, I moved one bottle to the fridge and the day after, tasted it. It smells just like beer. in fact, it smells fantastic! It had some (very little) fizz in the bottle, looked like cloudy beer in the glass and even managed a thin little head that vanished after 30 seconds. Green beer that still needs more time - no biggie, right? Then I had a taste. It tasted exactly like the beer I had been extracting using the thief for the hydro readings (I drank all the hydro samples). Starts malty-sweet, then turns quite bitter. I managed to finish the glass and decided it just needs more time (that was very young, I know).
So after all that explanation, I have a couple questions.
What affect will the hops-before malt mixup have on the final taste?
Does it sound like fermentation went okay? It started quite late but seemed to do okay once it got started (the crust in the primary was almost to the lid - a sign of a lot of vigorous activity, right?) I worry (I know -I said I wasn't worrying...) that either the airlock rinse, the peek under the lid, etc. may have invited some wild yeast - and maybe the heat killed the ale yeast and I fermented with just wild yeast.
What affect will the beer before sugar snafu have on the final taste/condition?
Will this beer likely be viable after it's conditioned and aged properly?
Sorry for the long post - not sure what bits are relevant.
You didn't...pee in the airlock...did you?
