Hello everyone, I've been researching these forums for a while now and have finally brewed my first batch of beer. I followed the recipe for Poor Richard's Ale found here. I brewed on May 9, 2020. Everything went smoothly for the first time ever brewing. I've made wine for the past couple of years and have a very strict cleaning and sanitizing regimen. I just wanted to highlight a couple of things and get feedback on how I can improve anything. My mash temperature ended up being 153 instead of 154 which I was ok with being 1 degree off. The recipe said 45 minutes but I had to let it go for 55 minutes after doing the iodine test a couple of times. I sparged 6.5 gallons for my boil and was suppose to have 5 gallons at the end. I finished with about 4.5 - 4.75 gallons. My targeted OG was 1.068 but mine was 1.082 after cooling. I read on another recipe to shoot for OG of 1.060 to 1.086 for this beer so I think I'm within range but was this caused by mashing longer or boiling off too much water? I cooled to 68 degrees and pitched a 1L yeast starter I made using White Labs English Ale Yeast, WLP002. The starter was made a couple days prior and I pulled it out of the fridge about 6 hours before pitching it. I put the carboy in a fridge I bought to use as a fermentation chamber and set the temp at 66. Its held at 66 except for once when I saw it spike to 69 but cooled off quickly. I set up a blow off tube and put the end of it in a solution of potassium metabisulfite. There has been lots of activity and it looks like a snow globe, there is only about an inch or two of krausen on it. I was thinking about raising the temp to 68 sometime this week if it slows down and maybe to 70 sometime after that. I'm hoping I can bottle in 2 weeks but I'll check my final gravity a couple of days.
Sounds like you had a pretty good first brew day. Most of the little things you noted are just a matter of dialing in your process/equipment. Once you have full conversion (i.e. all starches converted to sugars/dextrins), prolonging the mash won't really cause a higher OG, though it will cause higher fermentability (ultimately a drier beer). Part of the difference in actual OG vs expected was certainly due to ending up with a smaller than planned volume, because the sugars/dextrins were concentrated in a smaller volume. The rest of the difference would be due to getting higher than expected mash efficiency, which is something you'll want to keep in mind when using someone else's recipe or building your own, i.e. you'll want to size the grain bill to be consistent with the efficiency you're getting.
Sounds like you are off to a good start! The issues you are having are probably due to excessive adsorption by the grains from being old/dried out, or too hard of a boil. Just stuff to look to tweak in the future and not something to fret over too much. You'll still end up with good beer.
Congrats on a successful first brewing session. You should be forever hooked on this hobby now. If the higher OG and lower liquid volume (and the probable higher abv) is a concern, you can get back to the desired volume when you begin the bottling process. Boil your priming sugar into a solution with the amount of water that would get you back to the beer volume that you want. Adding the water will affect your FG reading (and the abv calculation) a little bit depending on the amount of water, so if you want to be precise in your record keeping, take your FG reading after adding and gently mixing into the beer the priming sugar solution in your bottling bucket.
As has been mentioned this is the reason for your OG reading to me higher than your target. For future batches you can just top off with water to something like 5.5 gallons to achieve your target OG and obtain more beer as well. @PapaGoose03 discussed how you can do this 'after the fact' by using more water to create your priming solution for bottling. I think this first batch turned out pretty good all things considered. Please report back on what you think of the finished beer. Welcome to homebrewing. Cheers!
Thanks to everyone for responding, I definitely have found my new hobby and have much more to learn. I will do my best to update this post as things progress.
Good morning everyone, I wanted to add a quick update to this post. Krausen fell a few days after my first post and there are only a few things floating on top of the beer now, I think they are yeast rafts. It has cleared up nicely but there are still some particles in it that makes it a little hazy/cloudy. I was going take hydrometer readings towards the end of this week to see how its going with the hopes of bottling, but I want it to be as clear as possible. Should I let it sit another week to clear more in the primary or move it to a secondary? The temp has been kept at 68F. I forgot to mention in my original post that I used irish moss during the last 15 minutes of the boil. Would a cold crash work if things don't clear up? I was wondering if I were to drop the temp, would I proceed with bottling while the beer is cold and then leave the bottles out to let them raise to room temp while conditioning?
Time and gravity work will work the same in primary as in secondary, without exposing the beer to O2 and potential contamination. You're something like 10 days in so far. If you want clearer beer, patience can be a virtue. It would likely clear the beer faster. But I wouldn't recommend cold crashing unless you are equipped to prevent O2 being sucked into the fermenter due to changes in pressure. You could let the beer warm up either before or after bottling.
And the beer will even further clear up during the time in the bottle during the bottle conditioning process. What you are seeing know is not representative of what you see when you drink your first bottle after bottle conditioning. Remember to pour carefully to decant the beer off the sediment and leave the last 1/4 inch or so of beer/sediment in the bottle. Cheers!
Pouring carefully to avoid stirring up too much sediment is a good idea. Keeping it out of the bottle in the first place is even better.
Even after visible fermentation signs have ceased you should give the yeast a few days to clean up any potential waste that they created, so your gravity readings should wait until you've allowed for that extra time. Clear beer shouldn't be a great concern right now because you're going to stir things up a bit when you add your priming sugar. After the bottles have been carbonated and you store them in the fridge, your beer will clear up under those conditions. Congrats on your first beer!
It will. But the sediment will still be in the bottle. Better IMO to keep as much out as practical. Nobody, no matter how carefully they pour, can avoid that first "glug," which agitates the beer all the way to the bottom (now vertical in the horizontal bottle). There's an "as clear as possible" pour from a moderately/heavily sedimented bottle, but it will never be as clear as a pour from the non/minimally sedimented bottle.
I remembered this post when pouring a beer and it “glugged”. Needing another beer, I decided to test the assertion and, with extraordinary care and patience, successfully poured sans glug. It might be attributable to a super steady hand, steadied by the previous 8.5% beer. Or it might be the New Belgium bottle, which has a more sloped shoulder when compared to the rounded shoulder of the typical 12 ouncer. I considered a blind test of three samples (1:2 glug/no-glug) in opaque cups with 15 tasters of varying experience, but with social distancing and all……
Another update on the beer. I decided to just wait for 3 weeks and let it clear, which it has cleared very nicely. Took a sample and measured it at 1.020, which I figured puts it at about 8% ABV. Planning on bottling this weekend. I couldn't help myself but I tasted it too. Smells like beer and has a bit of alcohol burn. No funky or gross tastes. A bit bitter finish and can kind of pick up the molasses flavors. Thanks again to everyone for your help, after this one is bottled I'll have to figure out what to brew next. Here's a pic of the sample I tested/tasted. https://ibb.co/P1x89pQ
