Brew Antics

[Flagg]

This is my brew story,
After a number of pratice runs I finally convinced my wife to let me use her fridge so I could attempt a Lager! I bought a Black Rock Dry Lager and Coopers Brew enhancer #2. Wanting to make it really special I even bought a Saflager 23 yeast!
Everything sees to go down hill from this point. I had some left over Dextrose (500g) so I added this. I was going to fill to 21l but accidentially over filled to 24l. From this point I began the primary in the fridge at 12C OG 1.040. Two weeks latter I racked to a secondry and bottled two stubbies, for good luck. The SG was still high 1.020. A week latter I checked tge SG again and it had come down to 1.015. Unfortunatly at this point I tried the brew. It tasted like sweet water! there was almost no beer taste!! So I panicked, thinking my beer would have no beer flavour I bought a Cascade spicy ghost disopved it in 2l of water cooled it and dumped it in my brew. I know I shouldn't have done it like that but I was not thinking propperly. The Primary was still somewhat carbonated and all this new suggar set it off. It produced a great head which came up very quickly. So I grabed the lid an put it on. So it decided to come out the air lock. So I took the lid off! the sudden release of pressure effectivly covered my kicthen with a really thick head!! So I had to stand back and whatch it till it settled down. At this point I put the lid back on and hid it in my shed.
With the wife due home in a half hour I frantically cleaned it up and just got hings looking normal before she got in. "Been Beering!" was her only comment, so I said something like I had a little spill and changed the subject.
Any way back to the beer it's had two week in the shed which was proably about 19C and is proably ready to bottle now. It's likley to be very malty and I was wondering if I should watter it down a little to reduce the concentration? any idears/comment?
- live and learn.

 

[Stuster]

:lol: :lol: :lol:

That is very, very funny, Flagg. Great picture of you trying to keep the foam down, but it coming out anyway.

So, in terms of the brew, I have yet to brew a lager but it seems that lager takes a lot longer to ferment that an ale so it sounds like your brew was rocking along fine until the unfortunate incident. The first thing you should do is check those stubbies you bottled. If I were you, I would drink those today or you will probably have bottle bombs. Then, how about checking the gravity of the beer?

The Brewcraft brewer's calculator at this link may help you as well.

 

[Flagg]

Stuster,
Youre right the SG of the stubbies was way too high to be safe and every day I was slightly lifitng the caps to release the pressure.
Origionaly the idear of the stubbies was to try and keep the yeast. However they cleared up real nice and the smell of the released gass was so enticing that it got the better of me. So after a couple of weeks I cooled them down slowly released the pressure and drank them! They were fantastic and in hind sight I should have let the lager run as it was. Only I panacked thinking I would end up with fizzy alcholic water. I would have had a very nice lager ready for the summer. I even convinced my wife to have a taste, she hates beer! but said "thats your best beer yet, and I'll even drink some when you finish!" I havent had the heart to tell her that it's not actually going to tast like that when its finished.
like you said Lagers do take longer and this is my first. I expect that I'll end up with a nice brew anyway and I'll be better prepared for next time. Unfortunatly I didn't check the SG after adding the second extract, to busy trying to clean up, so I'm not real sure what the final alcholic content will be. I will check the SG this weekend and then hopefully bottle.