Hello forumers, I started my second attempt at brewing last night and think I may have gotten a bit ahead of myself on my recipe. Full disclosure I'm getting my feet wet with a Mr. Beer setup I got as a gift before taking the plunge into bigger things. Did my first batch strictly following the Mr Beer ingredients and instructions and everything turned out just fine. For my second batch, I improvised with other ingredients from a different kit I got (an HBK Irish Stout-also a gift), making adjustments down from a 5 gallon recipe to the 2.5 my current setup calls for. Long story short I did my boil and after adding in the malt extract and hop pellets my wort was very thick, almost sludgy at the bottom. I went through with the recipe anyway and mixed it all up in the fermenting keg and added my yeast. I haven't looked yet but my guess is there is some sediment at the bottom of the keg. In hindsight, I think my two key mistakes here were 1) not adding more water to the boil when I thought it looked like it need some more and 2) using 2 oz of hops the original recipe called for instead of cutting that in half (the one adjustment my recipe didn't have). My guess is that it's the hops that didn't fully mix in and that I may be in for a hoppier than anticipated stout, not that I have a problem with that possibility. I've read on other forums where its been suggested to people in similar situations to shake the keg to get more mixing going on (and excite the yeast in process) but I'm not sure if that's the way to go or not. Also, is it worth letting this concoction sit for two weeks or should I just pull the plug on it now and start again with something else? Any chance this thing comes out drinkable? Thanks for any advice or insight. Curious to peak in on it tonight to see what I've got.
1. leave it be 2. hops drop out, stuff drops to bottom of fermentation vessel 3. leave it be Extra hops won't hurt anything but might make it extra hoppy
Thank you for the reply. There is definitely stuff collecting at the bottom and the yeast seems to be doing its thing so I'm just going to to let it sit and see what happens.
A couple of things. It doesn't matter if you're brewing inside, or outside, on electric or propane, you're going to have to measure your boil off. You don't want to add cholamines from tap water and you want to be able to predict how much you're going to boil off in a 60 min boil. On electric, it's usually just under a gallon and on propane it's slightly over. It just depends on your setup. You should do a full wort boil (batch recipe +~1 gal of water) when you start your boil. If you're doing a partial boil, account for this and add the appropriate amount of water to your wort at the end. Make sure you're using campden tablet into your additional water so you don't have chlorine. Edit: That said, you shouldn't be eyeballing your wort/water levels. You should be measuring them. Halving and doubling batches is just about as simple as multiplying or dividing your recipe. Boil off will be consistent though. If you add your steeping grains at the right time and your malt extract at boiling, you shouldn't ever have sludgy wort. It should all mix together during the boil.
