What will this beer end up tasting like (and other First Time Brewing Questions)

[NorCalAngler]

NorCalAngler - It makes total sense to add extract the way that you describe. But I'm wondering, I'm adding the LME during the hop boil, do I pause my timer when I took the boiling wort off the burner? It the wort still so hot that you just consider it part of the 60 minute boil time when you take the wort off the burner?

My process is to add half the extract in the beginning, get it to a boil then add bittering hops and start the timer. Then I do a late addition of the other half of the extract around 15 minutes remaining. This does kill the boil for a few minutes, but I don't stop the timer. There is probably a fractional impact on my IBU, but I'm not too concerned about it.

You can limit the impact of extract decreasing the wort temperature by keeping it in a bowl of hot water. This also makes it easier to pour.

 

[brewinginct]

NorCalAngler - That sounds like a pretty good method, I'll give that a try for the next beer I brew.

I'm still curious, is there anything I can do to mask the taste of charred extract? Anything I can do like dry hopping?

 

[CDbrews]

the scorched wort probably wont be a problem that you will notice. its your first beer so you are just learning the process and overall its seams that you had a pretty smooth brewday. the wort probably wasnt mixed the best with the water so your hydrometer reading was probably a little of, the OG would have been at roughly 1.075 as yooper said because you can only get so much out of your extract. the potential alcohol scale on you hydrometer isnt the best for beer because most beers wont finish at 1.000.... overall you will have a very decent beer for your first one!

 

[brewinginct]

CDBrews - Thanks for the words of encouragement, it definitely could've gone a lot worse on my first brew day, I could have had a boil over or dropped the pot of hot wort while I was pouring it into the fermentation bucket. And if the ABV isn't as high as my readings show I should still end up with something strong enough, hopefully over 6%. I hope it turns out as decent as you expect it will!

Two things I'm wondering:
1.) If I taste the beer when I check the gravity in about a week will I be able to get a better idea of how much of a scorched taste I MIGHT have in the beer?
2.) If it has a weird scorched/bitter taste is there anything I can do to hide it?

 

[Yooper]

CDBrews - Thanks for the words of encouragement, it definitely could've gone a lot worse on my first brew day, I could have had a boil over or dropped the pot of hot wort while I was pouring it into the fermentation bucket. And if the ABV isn't as high as my readings show I should still end up with something strong enough, hopefully over 6%. I hope it turns out as decent as you expect it will!

Two things I'm wondering:
1.) If I taste the beer when I check the gravity in about a week will I be able to get a better idea of how much of a scorched taste I MIGHT have in the beer?
2.) If it has a weird scorched/bitter taste is there anything I can do to hide it?

1. Yes. In a week or two, it'll start to resemble the finished product.
2. No.

 

[brewinginct]

Yooperbrew - Can't wait until next week to try this out in a week or two and see what's happening. The yeast is going crazy right now, I can literally hear it bubbling every 5 seconds. Even if this isn't the perfect IPA I was imagining the process of making beer is great and hey, my beer can only get better from here.

I'm probably going to make another thread about this in a few days but just out of curiosity, when should I rack to secondary? I'm assuming that since this is a higher ABV IPA with a lot of hops that it will benefit from racking to secondary, plus I've racked to secondary for mead/cider several times so I know what I'm doing as far as the actual process. It's more the timing that gets me.

Do I wait until the rate of bubbling slows down to once every minute or so, or should I measure the gravity and wait until it remains the same for two readings in a row, and THEN transfer?

 

[Yooper]

There are a couple of schools of thought on secondary. One is a "real" secondary, just like with wine where you rack when activity slows but isn't finished, so that the co2 produced protects the beer and it finishes up in the secondary. The problem with that approach is that sometimes it can stall a fermentation if the fermentation is going slower than it appears.

The second approach is wait until the beer is done, then wait a couple more days, to make sure the yeast have a chance to clean up any off-flavors they produced like diacetyl. Then rack.

When I make an IPA, I usually wait until the beer is finished and then rack onto the dryhops. I dry hop for 7-10 days, then package the beer. If you're not dryhopping, you can secondary for longer if you'd like.