Brewed my first one gallon "experimental" batch tonight

Only a 20 minute boil?

It will probably come out good.

 

Congrats! You finally brewed a batch instead of just talking about brewing a batch, eh?

Just busting your chops. You'll learn a lot from brewing small batches. The key is to keep brewing, the more batches you brew the more you learn.

Welcome to the club.

 

One thing that should be mentioned is that you should mash flaked oats, as opposed to steeping. They contain only starches and lack the enzymes needed to convert them to fermentable sugars. Flaked oats need to be mashed with a roughly equal portion of base malt. Or you can use malted oats.

 

Op was told this in another one of his threads. I guess he ignored it. I am intersted if there is anything bad that will happen by steeping these? Or is it just a waste of time?

 

Starchy beer. Reduces clarity and potentially shelf life.

 

With such a small batch, shelf life should be moot. Clarity and haze... well, yeah, certain grains should be mashed, so mash them. A partial mash isn't much different than steeping.

When I was doing partial mashes I just added some base malt to every mash, no matter what the ingredients. This eliminated the need to worry about what grains needed to be mashed and which ones could be steeped without mashing. Worked like a champ, and added an element of all-grain to my partial mash beers. Next time add some 2-row, maris otter, 6-row, or whatever base malt to your partial mash. Your results will improve. My partial mash beers were mostly good to excellent. Some of them I've yet to improve on with all grain techniques*.

*although admittedly, I'm only on batch 8 of all grain

 

You've only got 9 beers to drink and wheat beers are usually good after 3 weeks. I'd keep 'er bubbling around 70F. I'm not really familiar with (Saf-? wheat yeast?) but most do well and give a nice banana flavor at a pretty warm temp.

 

I think it would be difficult to measure 1/5 a pack of yeast. You may have under pitched. You will probably see 1/5 the bubbles in the airlock too. Just make sure your seals are tight and ride it out for another day. You still have 4/5 of a pack of yeast right?

 

Just for perspective, half a pound of unmashed oats in one gallon is equal to 2.5 pounds in a 5 gallon batch.
That's a lot of unconverted starch.
I might have to try this out myself just to see first hand how "bad" that might be.

 

Mashing isn't a big mystery so have no fear. Next time just steep with 2lbs of any base malt, like 2-row, pale malt pilsner, even munich (10L). Steep all the grain (crushed) at 154F-ish for 60min or so.

Carapils is fine in there, but it isn't a base malt and won't convert starches to sugars.

Essentially we are describing a partial mash approach. You might want to reduce the base malt a little with a partial mash approach, but don't worry about that yet. Keep it simple and enjoy a higher gravity than expected.

 

Why the hell don't big-time calculator PHDs put some kind of danger pop-up or something similar to keep people from using flaked adjuncts with extract? Rant complete.

 

That would be blow-off. Did you put one gallon of wort into a one gallon jug? Regardless of batch size, you need headspace for the krausen to be in. Batch Size x 1.3 is a good rule of thumb for fermenter size. Normally, when you get blow-off like this, you can just use a blow-off tube/receptacle to catch the excess. (Google it.) But if your fermenter is actually completely full of wort, you're going to lose some wort, even with a blow-off tube.

 

Like Vikeman said you need to have some head space for the krausen, even when you have adequate head space bubble overs are fairly common. You should be able to avoid a bit of the mess by putting on a blow-off tube. If I were you I would definitely not dump it because it should be really interesting to see how how far it will ferment and what it will actually taste like. It may not be what you wanted but each time is a learning experience and a gallon of beer is a gallon of beer.