Learning from mistakes - which mistake did what?

Oh man.

My first brew was great. We brought 5 gallons of water to a boil and dumped all our extract and a grain bag into our kettle, "mashed" for 30 minutes before adding my 60 minute addition of hops. Eyeballed the remaining hop additions because, "It's all going to the same place." Then we dumped everything into our fermentor and filled the kettle with ice water to chill it, pitched our yeast about 20 degrees too hot, didn't take a single gravity reading, dry hopped it 3 days later, and then transfered to a bottle bucket about 2 weeks after that.

We were so gung-ho on getting beer into bottles that we forgot to add priming sugar until we had filled 12 bombers, so we had to drop it into the filled bottles with a turkey baster.

Three days later our "IPA" tasted like and had the same mouthfeel as a bottle of perrier, but I'll be damned if we weren't proud as hell!

 

No doubt about it, the entire thing (homebrewing) is a learning process. You are doing the right things, I think, by criticing yourself, learning from your mistakes, and trying again. Keep trying, and learning. And have fun with it.

 

Please Sr, you are not the first neither the last one to get those mistakes.It is possible you feel some kind of frustration at the very beginning of the hobby, it is normal, you will get over it.

I do want to advise you to take a start reading here :


http://www.howtobrew.com/

Good luck and relax, everything´s gonna be alright

 

Did you start out brewing all grain? That's mistake no. 1 unless you have a good mentor to help you. Mash temp is critical, but there's a pretty wide range that will get you fermentable sugars, 148F-160F and you'll still make beer. A quart low is nothing, I wouldn't have even considered worrying about that enough to add water. And 2 weeks should be plenty of time to ferment most beers, assuming the temperature is right.
I don't see anyhting about how you handled your yeast. At what wort temperature diod you add the yeast? Was it dry or liquid yeast? If dry, did you rehydrate it, and if liquid are you sure it was viable? Your problems sound a lot more related to yeast than to what you think you screwed up.

 

I started brewing in the Dark Ages of homebrew, back in 1992. To make beer you bought a 3.3 pound can of pre-hopped extract, poured it into a pot of hot water(don't let it boil, you'll lose the hops flavors). Next add 1.5 pounds table sugar, chill to room temp, take the pack of yeast that came taped to the can of extract and pour it into the "cool" wort. Let it sit at room temp for a week, put it in a carboy for 2 weeks, then bottle and let it sit 3 weeks. Like cultbaus's beer, it was brutal but I was proud and happy, and very drunk. But honestly, it took 2 years and a complete mindset change before I started making decent beer.

 

It would be more helpful to give us your complete process as well as the recipe.

Mistake 1 - did you measure the gravity after the mash and after the boil? If you mash too high you get less fermentable wort. Do you know what temp it was? In my experience fluctuating mash temp isn't too big of a deal as long as you don't get too hot or too cool. One time I put my mash on heat as the temp was getting too low and it ended up getting up to like 170. My beer still turned out well it just had a much higher final gravity, lower abv than expected.

Mistake 2 - less volume may have been due to a mistake as you said or a higher boil off ratio than expected. For the most part less volume should mean a more concentrated beer with higher abv. Not sure that would make it terrible. Maybe adding mistake 1 and 2 combined to have a concentrated beer that didn't ferment out. Did you take a final gravity reading? Was the beer syrupy and sweet?

Mistake 3 - fermentation time. I rarely ferment or condition my beer longer than two weeks unless it's higher in abv or using a yeast that produces a lot of sulfur. However, I often then condition in my keg another week or two. You beer should be done fermenting after 5 - 7 days. Another week or two allow the yeast the "clean up". However, in my experience 2 weeks is enough time and wouldn't cause the beer to be awful. The question I would have is what was the temperature of the wort? During fermentation the wort can be as high or higher than 5 degrees ambient temp. Thus, if the air temp is 65 then it's safe to say the wort is 70 degrees causing excessive esters. Different yeast will produce different esters as well as Fusel alcohol if fermented too hot. If you used an ale yeast and the air temp was closer to 70 the wort was too hot. That's is your biggest problem.

Mistake 4 -not really sure I understand. Do you mean siphoning the beer to a bottling bucket? Transfer with an auto-siphon and mix the sugar. Then bottle from bottling wand. Should be an easy process.

What made the beer so awful? What yeast did you use, how much and how was it stored? What temp did you pitch the yeast at? Poor fermentation is mostly caused by poor yeast management.

Cheers.

 

This is a great place for advise. FYI my first homebrewing was done in the dark old pre-internet forum days with the little 15 page book that came with my first kit. Keep posting. You are in the golden age and this forum especially is very helpful.

Going on to your issues...

1. Is this an all grain batch? Brew in a bag? Extract plus grains? It sounds like you were trying to steep grains in a kettle, where temperature variation is really only of extreme importance for base grains that need to be converted. If you keep having this problem, consider not doing mini-mases, BIAB or investing in a cooler for a mash tun.

2. There are calculators you can use to help with boil off, but each system is different and you will dial yours in through trial and error. If you miss your expected volume but hit your gravity if I were you I would just not worry about it, learn from the mistake, and move on. If your gravity is high and you want to dilute your wort just make sure the water you add is boiled and chilled (and not chlorinated) before adding.

3. I routinely leave my beers in primary for three weeks. But your beer could also be finished in 2. Yeast strain, yeast health, pitching rate, and fermentation temperature all come in to play to determine when your beer is done. For new brewers, I would usually recommend the 3 week just because the extra time will help clean up any off flavors from fermentation. For new brewers, worry more about pitching adequate yeast and fermentation temperature over everything else.

4. I have never filtered a beer and don't see a need too. Homebrewed beers will have more sediment than commercial bottle carbed beers. That's just the way it is. Done properly the sediment is still minimal and left behind by a proper pour. If you want clear(er) beers you can; 1) cold crash your primary; 2) transfer to secondary and cold crash (ie lager); or 3) use a fining agent, like gelatin.

Your "poor fermentation" is likely due to one of two issues, the first can be ruled in or out depending on your process. If you were mashing base grain poor conversion will lead to less available sugar, leading to a lower staring gravity and less alcohol. A poor mashing process may also create a less than ideal wort which would leave behind unfermentable sugars. Another possibility is a less than ideal fermentation, which could be the result of myriad reasons; underpitched yeast, improperly pitched yeast, fermentation temperature, lack of oxygen in wort, etc.

 

Make sure you let us know your "mashing" procedure?

Also, how do you know your fermentation was off if you don't have the ability to measure your gravity? Just based off of the sweet taste?

 

It still sounds like a yeast issue to me. Did you observe fermentation taking place?

 

Correct. At no point in time should the fermenting beer (or after it is fermented for that matter) be exposed to sunlight. You also want it to be in a cool place. If you can not control the temperature directly with a fermentation chamber, you want to use the coolest room you have. exactly what temperature you should aim for depends on what strain of yeast you use.

 

If it isn't direct sunlight, probably nothing. But those are some possibilities. UV light is a catalyst for several reactions including skunking beer, and damaging / mutating DNA of microorganisms (yeast). Also, with sunlight comes heat, you usually don't want the wort to warm up.