Who wants free beer?

[MattD]

Ha, drew you in! So my first ever batch is bottled, has been for about 3 weeks. It's fairly decently carbed at this point. The problem is, it doesn't really taste like beer. It's too sweet, LOOKS kinda syrupy in the glass, and just tastes funny. I don' t know enough to be able to be more descriptive than that. It's not a BAD or foul taste or anything like that, I can drink it, but I just can't finish a glass as it just doesn't taste right. So, my question is, who'd like to diagnose my beer? You will be generously rewarded with ONE (1) brown glass 12 oz. bottle (once you've drained the beer of course), and the satisfaction of helping out a newb. Anyone interested in taking one for the team? :-D

 

[Yuri_Rage]

Not sure that I want to sample it, but if it comes down to that, I'll take you up on the offer. For now, post the recipe and your brewing/fermenting technique(s) - that should help narrow down the root cause of your "weird beer syrup."

 

[puravida286]

Possible problems: (diagnosed by a beginner)
not enough hops
scorched malt (pouring your LME too quickly into the brewpot)
poor fermentation (try a starter next time)

just my .02....probably just .01 actually

 

[MattD]

Recipe:

6.6# Amber LME
1# Crystal malt
1.5 oz. Hallertau Mittlefrau hop pellets
Burton Salts
whatever random dry yeast was sent

brought crystal up to 155F in 1.5 gallons water, sat it there for 15 min., then increased the heat to 170F and took it off heat. Dumped in LME, salts, and hops, brought back to a boil for 30 minutes. Sanitized bucket, airlock, all other stuff with B-brite. Put wort in plastic bucket fermenter and topped off with tap water to 5.25 gallons. Did not aerate. hydrated dry yeast in the meantime, pitched it at whatever temp the wort was at after dilution. OG was 1.035. After about 2 days the airlock had no activity, so I racked to secondary. At this point SG was 1.018. I left it in secondary for a week, in which time SG did not change. boiled .75 cup of "priming sugar" (I'm assuming corn sugar) in a cup of water, added to bottling bucket, racked in wort. Sanitized all bottles and caps and equip., put in bottles, capped. Voila!

Now, I know that I made many many goofs, but hey, I didn't know better at the time! I'm hoping that subsequent batches do better, and they already seem to be doing so, but I'm just curious what went wrong this time so I can avoid the mistake in the future.

 

[Yooper]

Did you remove the grains when you brought the temperature up to 170 (before you added the LME?)

Why did you boil for 30 minutes? Were you following a recipe? When you topped off with water, did you have about 1 gallon of wort and then added about 4 1/4? Did the wort feel warm to you when you pitched the yeast?

I ask these questions because I think maybe your grains got too hot, and that you didn't boil long enough for hops utilization, and that your yeast got damaged by too warm of temperatures. The yeast really took a beating. I don't have promash to tell you your attenuation or efficiency, but I can see that it's not very good! Of course, I'm no expert so that's my guess. It looks like your beer is 2% alcohol by volume.

Lorena

 

[the_bird]

I'm betting on the thirty-minute boil. You need 60 to extract all the bitterness from the hops, so you've got a beer without enough bitterness; it's out of balance.

Hallertau's a low-AA hop to begin with; a 60-minute boil results in about 24 IBUs, a 30-minute boil only 13.6. It's probably a lot less than that, since I can't figure out how to change the boil size in ProMash. A smaller boil results in even lower hops utilization, so I bet you don't even have 10 IBUs in there. That's just not enough to offset the sweetness of the malt.

 

[Ol' Grog]

Did not aerate and no bubbling activity. Sounds to me that you didn't have good fermentation. As others stated, did you record the ambient temperature that your primary set in. You could have shocked the yeast when you pitched in and there was a big temperature difference between the wort and temperature of the pitch. If that happened, then the yeast didn't "make" it past the primary and you racked way too soon. Some brews take a while to ferment. I suspect this is what happened since SG didn't change in the secondary.

 

[jar]

I'm not sure how your OG was so low. Promash says 1.047 for 6.6lbs of LME in 5.25 gallons. And that's ignoring the couple points you'd have gotten out of the crystal.

With a 1.5 gallon boil, I get 10.3 IBU. Where did the recipe come from?

 

[chillHayze]

2.2 ABV
47.7% attenuation

Looks like a combination or a short boil and unhealthy yeast. As others have said, you didn't get much bitterness from a 30 min, 1.5 gal boil and the yeast just didn't convert enough sugar before pooping out. Your recipe should finish around 1.009.

For next time:
60 min boil
bigger boil pot OR use more hops OR a higher AA hop
use fresh yeast from a major online store or if from a LHBS, make sure it is kept in the fridge and not more than 6 months old

EDIT: also add the LME slowly. A little at the start of the boil, then slowly add the rest in the last half hour. This prevents carmelization. And keep the LME container in another pot of hot water to make it flow better.
Good luck!

 

[Evan!]

Damn, dude, did I just get lucky, or what? It seems like SO many people have crappy first batches. My first batch, a basil pale ale, could pass for a quality microbrew. Anyone else had great inaugural brews?

Though, in the interest of humility, I HAVE made a couple since then that haven't been as good (low hops...)

 

[Brewpastor]

I would agree with the notion that your problem is from more then one source.

The root problem is probably fermentation. A 1.035 should have dropped down to the 1.006 range. You bearly got half the reduction I would have expected. If you get a good fermentation with a quality yeast you will have a drinkable beer, even if it isn't as you expected. The "whatever yeast that was sent" should be tossed IMHO and a trustworthy replacement found. Aeration is really important, as is some sort of forced cooling. All of this helps prevent infection and increases the chances of a good fermentation.

As has been stated, you need 60 minutes to get good bitterness from your hops. You get bitterness from a 30 minute boil, but not at nearly the same rate as a 60 minute boil. Also, you don't say if you removed the grain after steeping, but you should.

I do think the root problem is that yeast. If you get a "stuck" fermentation you can give the works a good shake and swirl to get the yeast back in suspension. I extreme cases a blast of O2 will get things back in motion. But all of this is only true if you have a viable yeast to begin with and that yeast is given half a chance.

If at first you don't make good beer, try, try again.

 

[Dustin_J]

In addition to what others have said already, I would guess that you also some pretty intense caramelization (and maybe even some scorching) during your boil. From the looks of things, you boiled all of the LME with just 1 1/2 gallons of water. Basically, the more water you can mix with the extract when you boil, the less caramelization you'll get and usually the better the flavor. I had similar problems with my first batch of extract beer and when I moved to a bigger boil it got better.

 

[MattD]

Hey, thanks for all the help! I was indeed following a recipe, obviously a very poor one... I did indeed remove the grains at 170, which I'd managed to pick up from other sources, as the recipe actually said just to bring it to a boil then remove. I believe the temp was around 80F when I pitched the yeast, I left a blank in my logbook for that info, but apparently forgot to write it down, so I'm going by memory. I don't know how much krausen I got, as I used a plastic pail for that batch, but the airlock did bubble decently for the day that it did bubble. I racked because the instructions with the recipe said to do so after the SG had dropped to half of the OG, which it had. I kinda expected it to ferment some more in the secondary, but NOPE.

I kinda figured this was just a case of a stuck fermentation, but I'm glad to hear all the other possible problems! One question though, if the yeast was stuck, so as to not ferment AT ALL in the week it was in secondary, how did I manage to get it to carbonate? Do you think it just got better aerated as it was being racked to the bottling bucket than it did when I was moving it to the secondary?

Luckily I fixed most of those problems with my subsequent batches, I'm just waiting to get them bottled and carbed so I can see some improvement!

 

[Ol' Grog]

Did you have a lot of sediment in the bottom of the bottles?

 

[MattD]

I don't know what's considered a 'lot' of sediment, but yes, there's a lot of sediment :cross:

 

[BrewStef]

I racked because the instructions with the recipe said to do so after the SG had dropped to half of the OG, which it had. I kinda expected it to ferment some more in the secondary, but NOPE.

It should ferment more in the secondary, though it will not be as visible (less bubbles, no krauesen.

Personally, I never transfer to secondary until after a week. The reason for this is that sometimes when you transfer too early it can cause a stuck fermentation as you are removing a fair amount of yeast. Besides, the only reason you want to rack to secondary is to clear the beer and get it off the trub/spent yeast which could contribute off-flavors if left on it for more than 3 weeks or so. Two days in the primary is too short in my opinion.

Racking to secondary is not even required, esp for such a low gravity brew.

Cheers.

BrewStef