Just cracked open my first homebrew ever and though it doesn't taste as good as most commercial craft it is still awesome to be drinking something I made. I brewed a Brewers Best English Bitter and added a 1/4 lb of honey during the last couple minutes of the boil. I do have a couple questions though. The whole time it smelled like cider and after two weeks in the bottle it is not nearly as strong but does have a tartness and slight cidery smell. From what i read the cidery taste is usually caused by to much DME. The recipe called for 3.3 lbs of LME and 1LB of DME so I am not sure that is the problem. Also I live in Columbus OH and we used tap water to brew with. We didn't use any chemicals to treat the water but we did boil it for 30 minutes to get some of the chlorine out. Any home brewers in cbus want to share how they treat their water? 3.3 LB Plain Light LME 1 LB Amber DME 12 oz Crystal Malt 1 oz Fuggle hops 1 oz Simcoe Hops 1 Sachet yeast
If you are using extract, RO or distilled water is fine...or use some campden tablets. For future reference, batch size, specific yeast, and hop addition times are helpful. Welcome to the addiction. : )
if it doesnt taste like apples like vikeman said, its most likely 2 BIG issues, especially if this is your first homebrew 1 - Yeast Pitch Temp (high temps when adding yeast will ruin your beer) wort should be <70F preferably cooler than fermenation temp, which for a bitter would do well at 65F 2 - Fermentation temp, if your beer fermented higher than 65-70F this is another source of problems, especially since in the middle of the carboy the temp is considerably warmer than the outside To me these are the likely culprits of your issue, compounded by you adding extra sugars for the yeast to eat (honey) which would further drive up the fermentation temperature
Thanks for the input guys. Not sure about the green apple smell, I will check the next bottle i open. So far it sounds like yeast pitch temp might be the culprit, i know it was high when we pitched. It was around 70F. The fermentation temp stayed in the low 60's the whole time. The fermentation was vigorous for about 30 hours and started within 12 hours of pitching, after those 30 hours it died off completely though. We kept it in the primary 2 days after fermentation stopped and then stored it in the secondary for another week.
Glad to hear it turned out decent , I am actually tranferring the exact same brew to secondary fermentation today. They recomend 2 weeks in a carboy and then 2 in bottles which seems like a long time not sure if I should follow these instructions or shorten the secondary to a week like you did. My fermentation also slowed very quickly after pitching.
I don't know if anyone mentioned this to you in other threads, but you really don't need to do a secondary with this beer. I would just wait until it has reached Final Gravity, give it another week or so after that in the primary to allow the yeast to clean up after themselves, and bottle.
Thanks Vikeman that is good to know 2 weeks secondary and another 2 in bottles seems like a very long time for an ale.
At the risk of adding confusion.... My point was that a secondary isn't really necessary. But a couple of weeks in secondary (if you did one) would not be too long.
Two weeks in the bottle is barley legal. No wonder it tastes like cr@p. Give it another month and report back about how fookin'good it is.
I agree I usually have to wait at least 3 weeks for it to be fully carbonated but usually give it 4 weeks just to be safe. Also make sure you keep the bottles in the low 70's while they are carbonating. I made the mistake of putting a batch I just bottled in the basement and they took forever to carbonate. I had to bring them back upstairs to finish carbonating.
I always add my honey in the fermenter when fermentation has slowed down. You will retain more flavor and aroma in your brew then if you boil it.
I see ,, let me ask this then. Is the secondary mostly for clarity or is it for flavor profiles to meld together and mellow out? Or Both?
You will hear people say that clarity is a benefit, but I would say that you get the same clarity in the primary with the same extended time. It's gravity that does that. The other benefit is that the yeast have an opprtunity to clean up their byproducts, which again can happen as easily (perhaps more easily) in the primary.
Read this chapter: http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter8-2-3.html In fact, read the whole thing. Great read, very informative, and free online! The soft back book is better if you have $15 laying around though.
