Bavarian Lager and Ale

[peekaboo_jones]

My second and third beers ever, brewed on 23-08-2014.
Picture is of the lager.

Lager Ingredients:
0.75kg briess cpw pilsner malt, light un-hopped.
0.60kg mangrove jacks munich lager, hopped.
12g perle hops simmered for 15 mins with half the malts.
1 sachet of Mangrove jacks m84 lager yeast with Sept 2014 expiry.

Total wort 9L with OG 1042
FG 1015 about 4 weeks fermentation.
Bottled 22-09-2014 with carb drops.

So I say around 4.3%.
tasting notes:
strong flavours, not overly bitter. Aroma not hoppy at all but it's quite a nice drop.

The kit I bought was a Bavarian lager kit for 21L but I just did 9L as stated above and used the remained of the kit for a 12L total wort but using safale 04 and other different additions were 0.5kg dry dark malt extract.
same hops procedure,
1.1kg mangrove jacks munich lager kit, hopped.
0.75kg pilsener, same as lager.
Basically an experiment and learning experience for me, nothing else.

Ale gravity's are:
OG 1062
SG 1021
Bottled 07-09-2014 with carb drops.
Tasting notes:
Very sweet and dark, bit more oomph about it and very creamy pouring into a glass. Strong flavours all round, hops not massively notable, very nice but strong.

I'll put a few away in the beer safe for Ron!

Cheers

 

[gilmoreous]

Hey man, those beers have a fairly high finishing gravity. I probably wouldnt keep them for too long or you will get bottle bombs. Drink and enjoy.

 

[peekaboo_jones]

Thanks gilmoreous, so the chances are pretty high for bottle bombs even though I couldn't drop the gravity anymore?
I reckon my yeast pitching temps were too high from memory, might have killed some of the yeast

 

[Alex.Tas]

Did you use plastic or glass? plastic can hold more pressure than typical glass bottles. The one with the 1.021 FG is the concerning one.
However if you are sure it was ready you should be fine.
Best way to test if it is finished is to do the forced fermentation test.
in simple terms, grab a sample of your beer from the fermenter, say 200ml. put it into a sterilised jar and shake the hell out of it. loosen the lid a touch to vent any pressure and screw it back on. shake and vent as often as you can over say 48 hours. keep the sample warm - dont worry about proper fermentation temps. this is just to test if the beer has attenuated fully.
test the gravity after 48 hours. if it has dropped then you know your beer has a way to go before its really done. if its still the same, your all good.

If it isn't finished, you can give it a helping hand by giving it a gentle swirl in the fermenter. or use a sanitised spoon, paddle or whatever to give the yeast cake a bit of a stir. Don't go bananas , you don't want to introduce oxygen into your beer at this stage of its life. You can also increase your ferm temperature a few degrees to help the yeast out. don't worry too much about off flavours from this, the bulk of the ferment is complete so the flavour change will probably not be perceptible.

my suggestion is that you do drink the ale first. if you notice that its getting really carbed up as time goes on, then be prepared for bombs.

 

[peekaboo_jones]

Thanks for your input!
I did do a few of these things and also swirled the entire fermenter a fair bit and increased the temp to around 25 for a few days without dropping the gravity. So I bottled into Coopers tallies and also some proper 330mls
But better to be safe than sorry & drink the ale's now but keep 3 stubbie's in a sealed container and check every week or so.