Or maybe the title should be "How bad did I mess it up?" Well, my first time brewing. I bought Mr.Beer Kit and I purposely choose the simplest possible thing... Pale Ale, already with hops. All I had to do was to and add water and yeast... I followed instructions I think I did a pretty good job sanitizing and everything else, but I wasn't really Walter White about it. I kept it for 15 days in a dark place with temperature between 72-76 Well after 15 days there were still yeast colonies on the top but I bottled the beer anyhow. (I did not check my beer for the yeast colonies at all until the very last day, because my fermenter was on the very top shelf in my closet and I needed a chair to reach it, so I just let it stay without checking it, so I can not compare it with the way it looked before.) I tasted the beer before bottling and it was kind of sour and you could taste alcohol. Maybe it tasted like white wine or something. Not bad, but not the way I imagined it would taste. I am actually not sure what was it supposed to taste like, but I knew it should not be sweet and it wasn't. Bottling... According to the instructions in the video, I needed 2.5 tea spoons per litter. I used 12oz glass bottles and I calculated that I need 0.85 tea spoons per bottle. Now, Directions said I need to sanitize my spoon and funnel, but once I sanitized it, it was wet and sugar would stick to spoons and to the funnel. I had no perfect control over the amount of sugar. Also, even though I did the math correctly, I took a wrong spoon and I realized that once I was about half done. So my first 10 bottles have about 1.5 tea spoons of sugar instead of 0.85. My questions are... 1) Was I supposed to bottle my beer even though there was yeast on the top? If no, how big mistake did I make? 2 )Is the sour taste alarming or normal? 3) How badly will amount of sugar affect the beer once it is done? Thank you all.
I also have another question. Don't laugh. Once I heard a story abut a 100 year old chocolate factory.. After they made their first batch of the chocolate, they saved a tiny bit and mixed it with their second batch. Then they saved a bit of their second batch and mixed it with their 3rd batch... So they kept doing it forever and they still do it today. Can I do the same thing with my beer? I am aware that I will be brewing different styles but I think If I add just a bit it would not affect it. What would be Ok amount and when to add it? I was thinking about half of a bottle and to add it in the worth. How stupid is this idea?
Did the yeast at the top of your beer look like this? https://www.homebrewhedonist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/KolschKrausen002.jpg Or this? http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LUmfIyj_kSI/TC1UNcVS0zI/AAAAAAAAAVY/usvsj0yzkwo/s1600/DSCN1537.JPG
It's doable. You just can't add too much or you will hurt the yeast. I don't see the point though. You could reuse your yeast and save it in some of the unracked beer
Is the sourness a sight of an off flavor? Instructions say keep the temperature between 68-76. What temperature do you think it's wright?
Temperature in the fermenter can be several degrees higher than room air. The right temperature depends on what you are making. http://howtobrew.com/book/section-4/is-my-beer-ruined/common-off-flavors
As for re-using beer in subsequent batches, you can't do it for more than 5 total batches. Brewer's yeast is bred to extremely specific genetic characteristics. Each subsequent generation will cause mutations that change the genes of the yeast depending on the conditions due to natural selection. After about 5 generations, the yeast is so different from the original strain that the characteristics will be essentially random. Additionally, the more stress you put on the yeast (i.e. under pitching, high OG, high ferm temperatures, etc.) the faster it will mutate.
Mothergoos03 thank you so much for you input. I feel like your judgement is correct. Thank you for the advices. There is one thing I did not understand. When you answered my third question about sugar, you said "Chil your first bottle... If it is over carbonated put other bottles in the fridge right away" When do I do that? In two weeks or now? (English is my second language) Thanks
daem3384, thank you for your answer. That is very interesting. I just want to make sure that you understood my question... I did not plan to reuse the old yeast, I planed to add a bit of my first batch beer into my second batch (maybe 5oz or so) just for fun. Does the rule of 5 times still apply? What if I add 1oz instead of 5?
I usually chill and test my first bottle after 10 days at room temp to see what the progress is for the carbonation. Since your beer has a high probability of being over-carbed because of the extra sugar it will be best to discover the over-carbonation early. Go ahead and chill your first test bottle at the 10-day mark and open it to see what carbonation you have. If there isn't much yet, wait a few more days and chill a second bottle to test it. Whenever you get a bottle that is properly carbed (or over-carbed) you should put the rest of your bottles into the fridge then to stop any further carbonation.
I forgot to comment on this question from above, so let me just say this. If you want to keep a little bit of each suceeding beer to add to the next one for 'continuity's sake' there is nothing wrong with that if you are not trying to reuse the yeast as @daem3384 suggested. This procedure is pointless (except to you) as far as affecting the beer's quality, etc. EXCEPT when the beer being added has an infection. You would be passing along the bacteria to your new beer in that situation. To avoid this happening you'd have to add the sample from the last beer during the boil so that whatever 'bug' has caused the infection will be killed by the heat from the boil. (The yeast will also be killed, thus making generational mutation a moot point.)
As an additional note, I have not used a Mr. Beer kit before so I watched the video in your first post. Since that is a 'no boil' process you won't get enough heat following this procedure to kill any unwanted bugs when you add a sample from your previous beer to the new beer UNLESS you change the process and boil the wort. I don't know what effect boiling a Mr. Beer wort will have (although it doesn't seem like it should hurt anything), so you may want to try fully boil a batch to see what happens. Then cool your wort to 65 before pitching the yeast.
Video actually says to bring water to boil and than remove it from the heat and than add malt. I guess, I could add my old beer into the boiling water, before I remove it from the heat... I read it somewhere (I don't remember where and I don't know if it is true) that if you boil hopped malt there is a risk that hop bitterness will go away. Since most of their malts are already hopped, maybe that's why they say not to boil them.
That could be true for hops that have already been boiled during the manufacture of the DME product, but I've never heard that. I'd tend to suspect that the reason might be that whenever you add malt extract to boiling water you'll usually get a boil-over mess after the liquid comes back up to boiling temp. A boil-over happens quickly and is totally unexpected for the new brewers who are likely the main market for Mr. Beer. It's very messy and not fun to clean up, so Mr. Beer may be helping to prevent their customer from being turned-off about about their product and homebrewing.
