Birth of a Beer...

You clearly have yet to buy in to RSWAHAH :)


tshile said:
I should start my own thread and title it 'Death of a beer'

What a disappointing day for me.

To start off, what I used to measure gallons appears to not be correct but rather be 1/2 gallons. When I poured the post-boil wort into the fermenter I realized I had 1/2 the wort I expected. Checking with a 3rd device confirmed that instead of steeping and boiling 3 gallons with my specialty grains and extract I was doing it with 1 1/2 gallons.
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Empty gallon milk jug. Believe it or not, although it does have an impact on the final beer (not necessarily good or bad, just different), your water to grain ratio isn't going to make or break your beer one way or the other. With extract kits you can dilute with water as it sounds like you did. With all-grain I typically shoot for about a 1.25 ratio of quarts/lbs of grain and I use an online mash calculator to figure out what the water temp should be going in to get the correct temp (by far the most important aspect).

I'm guessing your mistake won't make much difference.

On top of that, I hydrated my yeast then proofed it and I'm not sure it was alive. So... between not boiling the extract in the correct amount of water and the yeast not looking very lively I'm wondering if this thing will even ferment at this point.
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I would get away from powdered yeast asap. Either use White Labs tubes

[media]http://www.whitelabs.com/images/09-1003WLP001.jpg[/media]

or Wyeast smackpacks

[media]http://foodnbeer.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/wyeast-smack-pack.jpg[/media]

The specific gravity at the time I pitched the yeast was 1.044, according to the recipe the target was 1.049.
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I don't even measure specific gravity anymore. Again, you will likely be just fine. I'm not saying it's not important, just that if you follow a recipe closely, chances are you'll get close to your specific gravity. It's just another thing to 'worry' about. Don't. You'll be fine.

We'll see if it even ferments. Half of me is hoping it doesn't so I can finally justify dumping it and starting over. I thought long and hard when I realized the water screw up and added the yeast issue to it, but decided not to. Rather, my wife convinced me not to. Not fermenting would convince me to dump it instead of getting new yeast and pitching it.
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The only reason it wouldn't ferment is if you didn't reconstitute your yeast properly. That's why it's better to take that out of the equation and use one of the yeasts I described above. Or even better, use one of those yeast types to make a starter. And dump your beer? Don't even think about it. Chances are, it will be just fine. The biggest factors in whether your beer will taste good are the quality of your ingredients and cleanliness. Start with good ingredients, and keep your equipment clean, you're quickly going to be impressing yourself.
 
You're right, I haven't bought in yet on RSWAHAH but I'm working on it :)
Not sure if you've figured this out about me yet or not, I'm bit of an over-reactionary person sometimes (lol),especially when I spend 6 hours doing something and I'm convinced I screwed it up. I do the same thing when I remodel rooms in my house... :)

You're right - I want to get into liquid yeast as soon as possible but my understanding was the dry yeast was a good way to do the first time or two just so you didn't have to mess with a starter wort.

Everything I read said make it as simple as possible the first time or two and they're right - there's a lot going on.

The good news is as soon as I got back from the gym I noticed fermentation has begun. I picked up some beer and now I'm relaxing after a hard days work :)

Hopefully it's good. If not screw it, I'll do better next time ;)
 
I have little doubt it will be fine, T. Trust me. If you could see the cluster**** some of my batches have started out as, you would be stunned that I still brew, much less drink what I brew. Heck, I messed up the batch I brewed on Saturday when I totally forgot that I needed to clean my wort chiller (it was covered in oxidation from months of no use) and ended up having to let the wort sit in the boil pot in my garage overnight to cool before I could pitch. I covered it and did the best I could but still...

And don't sweat missing your target OG. I'm usually off by just a little bit as well. You really didn't miss by much. I have had a couple of all grain batches end up off by .015 or more. Guess what? They still tasted great.

Boone doesn't have issues like this as all his beer is done perfectly but I can commiserate with you. ;)
 
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Going to brew my first extract beer since I started back 5 years or more ago. Saw the kit on Northern Brewer for the 'White House Honey Ale' (supposedly the same recipe Obama has made for him). I can't find any common ground with the guy politically, but maybe I'll enjoy his beer. Besides, it came with a nice free Pint glass.
 
Neophyte said:
Boone doesn't have issues like this as all his beer is done perfectly but I can commiserate with you. ;)
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All joking aside, of the 3 beers I made over the holidays, only one of them (in my estimation) was better than average - a Chocolate Stout I brewed. The other 2 - meh, certainly drinkable, but I could take or leave them. Not sure why, except that I did fudge some on the ingredients and messed with both recipes. Sometimes that creates a thing of beauty, sometimes you just mess up a good recipe :)
 
Yeah i'm interested to see how this turns out. I pitched the yeast at ~85 degrees because I was so incredibly frustrated at that point I just started getting sloppy. Over the first 36 hours the temp dropped to 68. My understanding is that pitching the yeast at too high of a temp results in a yeast orgry and lots of un-wanted things in your beer that can't be conditioned out. Furthermore, having such a temperature drop while fermenting can shock/kill the yeast, which results in awful beer.

So we'll see. I'm not concerned either way, I've written this one off as a fun experiment in not doing things right, and I am eagerly awaiting an opportunity to do the next one (which will be when this one is a week out from being bottled.)

I went to the store yesterday and picked up a 5 gallon carboy for conditioning, a pump for my siphon, a wort chiller, and some other odds and ends.

At this point it's going to take 7-8 batches to break even equipment wise. Thankfully I'm not doing it to save money :)
 
One of the best beers I have brewed, my Rye Bones Summer Ale, I pitched and fermented hot. Like you, I was frustrated on how things had gone during the brew day and I was out of time so I just said "screw it!", pitched the yeast and let it rip. I was using SafeAle 05, a dry yeast that is really forgiving although works best in the 68 to 70 range. It fermented hot the whole time (upper 70s or 80 degrees) but the beer was great.

Oddly, I have made that same recipe twice more with much better temperature control both times and the beer has never been as good in the estimation of myself and several others.
 
quick update - i got that solution you recommended from northern brewer boone. i look forward to not having to use bleach :)

I've racked over to the conditioning carboy and it's starting to clear up. going from a orangish-borwn to a deep redish-brown, super excited.

i had some of my buddy's stuff he made a few weekends ago and it was absolutely delicious. i don't even know where you'd buy a beer that tastes that good, i feel like you'd have to go to a brewery much like you do for wine tasting.
 
Brewing my Jerked Porter last night in the garage with near tropical depression conditions going on outside. It was the most miserable brewing session I have ever undertaken but I was running out of time for keeping my yeast starter alive (I had planned to brew this last weekend but that fell through).

No clue what kind of faith I have in this batch. It will be interesting, to say that least.
 
Dropped the spices in my Jerked Porter tonight...man, does that beer smell good!
 
Explain the 'jerked' part please...
 
Btw...got my Madagascar vanilla beans today, will begin their soak in some high quality bourbon over the weekend for their eventual addition to a bourbon barrel vanilla porter :)
 
Boone said:
Btw...got my Madagascar vanilla beans today, will begin their soak in some high quality bourbon over the weekend for their eventual addition to a bourbon barrel vanilla porter :)
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Keep us updated on the process, I always wondered how you made that.
 
The amber is clearing up and taking on its future color. 2 weeks from bottling still :(

Picking up the Hoppiness is IPA ingredients tomorrow morning and making that.

Edit: assuming the store has all the hops I need. I'll have to bring a backup recipe in case they don't.
 
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Boone said:
Explain the 'jerked' part please...
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I spice this porter with some of the traditional spices found in a good Caribbean Jerk. I have used a combination of Allspice, Black Pepper and Coriander for this brew for years. This time I added a bit of Nutmeg to it a well.

That is on top of using some 60L Caramel, Black Patent and Chocolate malts to get the base beer. I soak the spices in vodka for a couple of days while the beer goes through primary fermentation, then add the spices and let it ferment another couple of weeks.
 
Wow - sounds interesting ... Can't imagine the finished product but sounds amazing!
 
When I was transferring the recipe to my recipe book I was like wow this is a lot of stuff.
When I was checking out at the store in almost had a mini panic attack :)
 
I haven't 'gone there' yet, but as I get back into gardening, I'm going to try to grow my own hops. I've been told it's very easy.
 
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