Okay, I am a first time brewer and I just brewed my first batch of beer a few days ago. I brewed an Irish red ale from a kit and followed all the instructions. I am worried because after the 60 minute boil I poured my wort into my carboy and saw that there wasn't a lot of sediment or sludge accumulated on the bottom of my kettle, in addition the end yield was only about 1.5 gallons and I was expecting closer to 2.5. It's been a few days and the sediment has settled to the bottom of the carboy and the beer has started to form Krausen On top. Obviously my first brew isn't going to be perfect I wasn't expecting it to be. My question is; is there anything I can do when I rack the bath for secondary fermentation to see if the brew is worth keeping, bottling and carbonating? I would prefer to not wait four to five weeks for a missed batch. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
@Abk542 I think this thread will get moved to the Homebrewing forum, so I hope that you'll look for it there. Is there a lot of trub in the bottom of your carboy? If there is, then you'll have to consider that volume as lost liquid displacement in addition to what you likely have already experienced -- loss of wort from boil-off. If there isn't an extraordinary amount of trub, then you won't even need to transfer to a secondary fermenter. (Unless you are going to age your beer on fruit, oak chips, etc., a secondary is rarely necessary.) But your beer is not lost. You can top off the beer with water in the fermentor now or when you bottle it. I'll suggest make up most of it now but leave it a little short of the desired 2.5 gallons because you'll be adding more water with your priming sugar solution at the time of bottling bottling. Did you take a specific gravity reading before you started fermentation, and did it come close to what your recipe predicted? If you are short on water by the amount that you say, your reading should be pretty high in comparison to the recipe's expected original gravity. Whatever your reading might have been will also give guidance to how much top-off water that you can add. Also, to help you better, it would be important to know if this was an extract recipe beer, or did you brew by using the all-grain method? P.S. Welcome to the BA site and to this wonderful hobby of drinking and learning about great beer and brewing some of it at home too.
Welcome! Keep this beer. You won't know for a few months if it's worth drinking anyway. Don't go into secondary unless you have a good reason to. (Oak, fruit, or long-term aging would be good reasons). Clarity is not a good reason. Careful racking and time will be all you need for an Irish Red. let it hang out in primary for another 2 weeks. Take a gravity reading. Wait 3 days. Take another gravity reading. Are they the same? You've hit FG and you're good to bottle. Boil off rate needs to be taken into consideration, as said above. If you're looking to make a 2.5 gal batch of beer you typically start with 3.5 gal in the boil kettle. A typical boil off rate is about a gallon an hour. It's easy to overlook.
Update: the krausen has gone down and there apears to be yeast floating on top of the wort. It doesn't seem to be swimming or moving about. There is true in the bottom yes. The airlock has stopped bubbling. I'm somewhat confused. I don't feel that the wort is fermenting properly. Thank you both for your advice and help
The beer is probably done with 95% of the fermentation, so just relax and let it sit another week for the yeast to clean up behind themselves. Do you have a hydrometer? Take a reading in 5 days, then take another in 7 days. If the readings are the same or very close (and close to the predicted final gravity for your recipe), you can go ahead and bottle/keg. Did you add water yet to get just below your target of 2.5 gallons? Just make sure to get the top-off water in before you take gravity readings. Stir it as best as you can, which is not easy in a carboy, without creating bubbles and adding oxygen. You'll also be stirring up your trub, but it has another week to settle. Allow some extra water for what you think is the volume of the trub, but don't get too generous and overshoot your target. You will still add some more water with your priming sugar, assuming you are bottling this beer. If you added water before the fermentation really got started, then you're golden because the churning of the wort during fermentation would have mixed the water in very well. The white stuff that is floating is probably minor leftover floating yeast or some bubbles from the little bit of fermentation that is still occurring. It's normal, don't sweat it. The beer sounds like it's doing okay.
I want to second what @Mothergoose03 said. From what you've told us, the beer sounds fine. Certainly next time you'll want to address whatever issue led to the lower-than-expected volume, but this beer sounds like a typical first brew. Enjoy it!
