After years of thinking about homebrewing, I finally made the plunge (with the help of my girlfriend.) We both did our homework, read Palmer, watched youtube videos, etc. Bought a bunch of gear off Craigslist and brewed our first batch on Sunday. It was an ESB extract with specialty grains kit from a homebrew shop in Brooklyn. We followed the recipe and everything went fairly well. My only real bonehead mistakes came when it was time to chill the wort. We boiled with 2.5 gallons and then were going to top off to bring it up to 5. Without thinking I added cold water straight from the tap. We also had some water spray out from the wort chiller where the plastic tubing was locked down to the copper, due to that being loose. We decided to bring the full 5 gallons back up to boil. Tightened the connections on the wort chiller, re-sanitized it, and tried again. No contamination the second time. Pitched the yeast at 74 degrees or so. The OG was 1.062, but our target was 1.055. What may account for that? The longer boil? Sorry for the noob question. Also, do you think the reboil saved our wort? Its now about 30 hours later and the yeast has been doing its thing. Came home to some nice fluffy krausen. Some had risen up into the airlock and a small pool of wort filled the topside of the exterior of the rubber bung. It seems to have settled back down now. Should I take the airlock out and clean/refill it with sanitizer? Or leave it be? I still see bubbles pass through the airlock so I dont think its clogged. If I do take it out, what do I cover the carboy with? Sanitized aluminum foil? Sorry for this rambling of a post. Ive been lurking here for awhile trying to soak up any knowledge I can, so thanks for all the help everybody. Overall we both really enjoyed the brew process. Definitely going to learn from my mistakes. Cant wait to do it again! Next comes my bonehead bottling day mistakes...
Yes,its very likely your OG was higher due a longer boil.Please take out that dirty airlock,clean it up and refill it with sanitizer.As you mention you can cover your fermentor with an alluminum foil while cleaning the airlock.After fermenttion is done remember to sanitize every single thing that touches your wort and do not let O2 get into your wort by all means. Edit : It is possible that your reboil could have killed any bacteria that would have entered into the wort
You'll be fine. Get a piece of tubing that will fit the top of the carboy and put the other end in some sanitized water, it's called a blowoff tube and will be very handy during the first few days of fermentation so you don't make a mess of your ceiling. Your high OG could be due to a high steeping temp for your specialty grains or maybe the extra boil. Either way you upped your efficiency quite a bit, well done ;-) if you hit your target final gravity you can expect your beer to be about .5% stronger and may taste just slightly hoppier. Relax, don't worry, and have a good beer until the brew is done!
Thanks for the reassurance. Went ahead and cleaned out the airlock. I'll probably go the blow off tube route next time around. Looks like this might turn out to be an extra extra special bitter
Relax. Don't Worry. Remain calm. Carry on. --- It may not turn out To be the beer you wanted Beer it will still be. - hOmebReW HaIKu
You probably would have been fine with the spray from the chiller, but it doesn't hurt to be thorough. You are right that the reboil probably accounts for the higher than expected gravity. IN the immortal words of Charlie Papazian, "relax, don't worry, have a (home)brew."
Yep. no worries. Grats on going over the OG estimate. Most brewers brag intolerably when the go over the OG mark. You have beer, dude, or well on the way to it. P.S. I went standard airlock for about 8 brews, now I wonder why.
And when the beer turns out, you should name it Victory. May not be quite what you expected, but nice recovery for a first brewing experience. Smells like Victory to me.
If the airlock wasn't dry, I would have left it. No sense opening another window for bugs to get in. That said, it's probably fine. Use a blowoff tube next time. As to adding tap water - I did that routinely when I was doing partial boil extract brews. No need to reboil, since tap water is sanitized. FWIW, the chiller doesn't need to be sanitized, since you're putting it in hot wort. Regarding the OG: if this was supposed to be a 5 gallon batch, and you ended up with 5 gallons, then the boil would not explain this. The OG of an extract brew is pretty predictable. Not sure how what might have happened here. Did you adjust for temperature? Was the wort mixed well? From what you described, you did fine. You'll make a lot of bonehead mistakes, likely worse than this as you gain experience. Welcome to the carnival!
This^^^^ It sounds like you did the right things and have nothing to really worry about, except that it's your first try and everyone obsesses over their first try. It sounds like you have considerably higher than average odds of making "tasty beer" on your first go-round. One thing tho, if you can boil your entire wort, do so. Boiling half and then topping off with equal water is far inferior to boiling the whole amount. Full boils = GOOD. Use two pots if you have to, and split up the hops proportionately between the two pots. Cool one down with the wort chiller, then transfer it to the second. And remember, beer is more forgiving than you might think, if you stay in your league and within the limits of your equipment (i.e. don't try to brew a 14% oak aged RIS on your third beer). You have to be meticulous about some things (sanitation, fermentation temperature, pitching temperature*) but others you can merely be pretty close and you're fine (recipe design, hop quantities, OG readings, final volume etc). You're not a professional brewer, and it's ok if every batch comes out a little different. All mine do! *you said you pitched at 74F. Below 70 is typically "better" for ales. However, 74F isn't going to ruin your beer, but try to get it below 70F if you can. you may be a noob but can still make tasty beer patience, grasshopper
I agree with what Mike said. With an extract beer, OG is a product of the amount of extract and the volume of water, independent of boil time. I would suspect a measuring error: either in measure the extract or the gravity. To the OP: there are actually quite a few extract brewers who add unboiled tap water to top off their wort, apparently without complications. So you probably would've been OK. Anyway, you did good! Everybody looks back on that first batch knowing there are things they would've done differently. Don't worry about it, enjoy the beer, and get to work on that next batch!
My guess is the OP topped off with less water than necessary and then the extended boil was the real reason for the higher OG. I don't think steeping grains would be responsible for such a difference. Also having a higher specific gravity shouldn't make it taste hoppier, if anything the added sugar would make the beer less hoppy. OP: to me it sounds like you really did your research and knew how to handle your mistakes. I know you did better than I on my first couple brew days. Cheers!
If his OG is higher but he still hits his target FG, then the beer will taste drier than it would have otherwise. Increasing gravity can also affect your hop utilization for the better, but there's no guarantee it'll taste appreciably hoppier when finished.
That is a good point and I guess I didn't catch "if he still hits his FG". I bet the FG will still be a little higher given the overshoot of OG.
I don't know what yeast strain you used, but for any strain that would typically be used in an ESB, that's really too high. Also (depending on strain), you'll probably want to keep the fermentation temperature somewhere in the 60s as it proceeds. If you don't have a way to directly control your fermentation temps, placing your fermenter in an area where the ambient temp is a few degrees lower than your target fermentation temp can be a good compromise solution, particularly until you decide whether or not to stick with the hobby and invest in more equipment. The reason for having an ambient temp lower than your target temp is that fermentation produces additional heat.
After I brought the 5 gallons back up to boil, I topped off with some water we boiled in a second pot. I only did the partial boil because that's what was in the directions and figured for this first attempt I'd stick to the directions as written. I'll probably just try and do a full boil next time. I'm using a 32 quart stock pot that can cover two gas burners on my stove, so I think I'll be able to do it. Temp control for fermentation is definitely a concern for me. I'm brewing in a house in Brooklyn. I'm doing everything in our kitchen, which is on the 'basement' level of the house (it's kind of half underground. Street level of the house has a five step stoop up and 5 steps down to a second entrance,) and storing the beer there as well. Don't have AC, so it's subject to ambient temps. It's not terribly hot down there, but definitely not in the 60's. I'm keeping the carboy in an area that never gets daylight and keeping it wrapped. Figuring out a temp controlled fridge set up will probably be one of the first upgrades I look into.
You could consider using a swamp cooler to keep the fermentation temps lower. Just need water, a fan, a towel, and a large pan/tray.
This is your best option, even void of the fan. Get a tub, add the carboy. Add water, add some ice or frozen water bottles, and a shirt over the carboy, and it'll keep it down to help the temp while the main fermentation is taking place. Once it's pretty much slowing down, you can let it free rise to ambient temp in the tub.
