Help with a Nut Brown Ale (my first!)

I think it’s right on track. I would try and get the temp back up in the 70°s the last week of fermentation to help out with diacetal. In the end I think you will have a great beer. Your title says Nut Brown Ale and you mentioned Block Party Amber Ale? Little confused there. Don’t be surprised if some of the head “krausen” hangs around till bottling day. It won’t hurt a thing. To be honest some of my best beers were the ones I wasn’t so anal about and used cheap equipment.

 

One more vote for "right on track".

Wait until you have reached the final gravity before packaging (e.g., bottling). You will know you reached final gravity when you obtain the same specific gravity reading a couple/few days in a row.

Cheers!

P.S. Also smell/taste your hydrometer samples to enure there is no fermentation by-products like diacetyl (smells/tastes like butter/butterscotch), acetaldehyde (green apple).

 

Another vote that your beer is doing okay. You mention that your OG reading was 1.050 vs. what the recipe says it should have been, 1.042. Do you have the full 5 gallons of liquid, or perhaps you've overlooked that you have less liquid than expected because of boil-off. Losing liquid will cause your OG to read higher than expected because your wort is more concentrated.

So the next question is, what is the recipe's predicted FG? On the fifth day you measured 1.028, so how does that compare to the predicted number. Again, if you had liquid loss due to boil-off, your reading will be higher than expected. Your abv will also be higher than expected, so be prepared for that effect. However, you can add some boiled/cooled water at the time of packaging to get back to the full 5 gallons and the expected abv. If you will be bottling your beer, you can use that liquid for dissolving your priming sugar.I

P.S. Welcome to the BA site and to the Homebrewing forum. And to this great hobby!

 

And one more vote for the positive, welcome to the madness
Brew on!

 

Just to emphasize to @michealtrichaife, if you decide to add water at bottling it must be boiled (e.g., for 15 minutes) to drive out dissolved oxygen otherwise this water addition would result in oxidation of your beer.

If it was me I would not add water at bottling to ensure no additional oxygen added to the beer.

Also, if your volume of beer is less than 5 gallons you will need to add less priming sugar at bottling (presuming you are bottling).

Cheers!

 

I started also with the Northern Brewer Starter Kit and the Block Party Amber Ale just a year ago. Did one more extract batch after that and then moved on to All-Grain (just sampled my 2nd All-Grain batch yesterday). If you are anything like me, you will be purchasing a bunch more equipment soon (propane burner, large brew kettle, wort chiller, Mash Tun, HLT, etc.). Just so you know, it is well worth the money to purchase the additional/upgraded equipment and to move on to All-Grain brewing. All-Grain (at least to me) is more of a genuine experience when it comes to brewing. You are doing the whole process from beginning to end and I feel it is more rewarding, YMMV. Don't hesitate to reach out to these folks with questions, they are a wealth of information. Every question I have posted (a lot of them very rudimentary questions) have been answered even though they were probably asked before and I'm sure for some of my questions, eyes were rolled, but the questions were answered in a constructive manner. I would suggest you search my posts over the last year and I am betting a lot of the questions you may have will be answered in those posts. Welcome to the obsession!!

 

I will also suggest getting it back to 70s for a week. Finish strong, clean up off flavors.

 

You're on track, nothing to worry about - the foam settling just means that the yeast is finishing up the active part of fermentation. ||There's still more work to be done, so leave it alone for another while - I know I'm late to this party, so assuming you posted on day 5, you're about a week and a half. Give it minimum another few days, I personally give my beers 3 weeks in fermenter, before checking in on it.
But, all that said, being that you were fermenting hot those first few days - at or above the temp threshold - you'll probably end up with some fusels in there that aren't ideal. It'll still be drinkable, but not perfect.
|I would recommend for next time, get the wort temps as low as you can before pitching. it's slower to come down at that point.
Also, if possible, keep it in a closet or somewhere dark, while fermenting. This will also keep the a,bient temps more stasble - a couple degrees here or there isn't a big deal, but any help is best.