Help Needed!

[Pandreas]

Hi brewers....

Made my fourth brew today and was hoping for a kick ar$e brew!

You see. my first 3 brews sucked. The first 2 brews I made I used a poor quality yeast so had poor attenuation and a lot of sugars remaining in the beer which made them taste quite poor. FG remained at @1.019.

My third brew was an attempt at a hoegaarden. What a joke, bottled it today and it lacks aroma and flavour. Seriously, you can't smell it or taste it!! No orange flavour or spicy flavours from the coriander, NOTHING! FG was 1.014 down from OG 1.050 which was better than my first 2 brews, due to a better yeast.

Anyway, today I decided to make a Coopers Pale Ale clone using an all extract method and a recipe given to me on this forum.... Once again I think it will be effed because of my methodolgy, Would REALLY appreciate someone telling me where I went wrong.....

Here's what I did.....

RECIPE-

3kg Light DME
100g Crystal Malt
150g Wheat DME
20g POR @60min boil
10g POR @20 min boil
10g POR @10 min boil

METHOD-

Heated 2 litres of water to @70 degrees and steeped grain in a stocking for about 15 minutes. Discarded grain sack. Added the Dried malt extract which didn't dissolve but immediately turned into a massive rock hard lump of malt sugar which slowly, painfully slowly dissolved into th wort with a lot of stirring and with my increasing the heat somewhat. Not happy, is this normal?????

When the malt extract was finally dissolved I brought the wort to the boil.

Added the hops. Bloody pot exploded on me and I lost about a litre of liquid to overflow. (Need a bigger pot and will be more careful with hops next time and add it gradually!).

Anyway, boiled the wort for 1 hour adding hops per schedule. I couldn't smell the wort because of all the wort on the stove pot burning and sticking to the hotplate. Damn near stunk out the house and ruined my sense of smell, but thats another story.... Took me over 2 hours to clean my kitchen, @#*&!

The wort got really DARK in colour..... I didn't have the heat on too high and I kept stirring the pot continuously, but the wort ended up a dark red/brown colour more like an amber ale as opposed to a pale ale. Not happy. OG 1.044.

Cooled the wort as quickly as possible and strained it into my fermenter, diluting to make up 21 litres. Temperature was at 24 degrees so I pitched in my 1.5 litre CPA yeast starter I have been making for the last 3 days. The yeasties were going along quite nicely in the PET bottle, but are yet to show signs of activity in the fermenter after 4 hours, but thats ok, will give it time.

Tasted the wort before pitching the yeast. doesn't taste anything like coopers. doesn't have the bitterness from the hops I desired, doesn't have the colour, tastes like an amber ale......

Can anyone please tell me what I am doing wrong?? If anything.... Where does my methodolgy go wrong?

Thanks guys, appreciate your help. feeling very dejected. Tonight I'm drinking my brews that taste like crap and reckon I've got another crap brew on the way..... Wonder if a decent home brew is a myth...lol

Cheers,
Patrick.

 

[Back Yard Brewer]

Hi brewers....


Added the hops. Bloody pot exploded on me and I lost about a litre of liquid to overflow. (Need a bigger pot and will be more careful with hops next time and add it gradually!).


Cheers,
Patrick.

When you added the hops, and it exploded, I would say along with it went your first hop addition

Cheers BYB

 

[Tyred]

I can't see anything glaringly wrong with your technique.

A few questions relating to it however.

The colour you described I've noticed before because the wort is really concentrated. What sort of colour was it after it was diluted up to 21 litres ?

Did you add the malt extract in one big hit or did you add it gradually. From the sounds of it, you added it all in one hit. I've found 1kg at a time is about the limit for easy dissolving.

Was more water added after removal of the grain sock ? More water (I take mine up to about 4 litres) means the malt can dissolve better and (I think) may give better utilization of hops (not too sure on that point).

Boil overs happen and I find quickly removing from heat helps. In time you can read the signs preceding a boil over.

Hope that's of some assistance.

 

[Brewtus]

Can I suggest you go to something a little more simple like a Kit and tin of malt.

If you boil 2 lt of water, chuck in the hop for 10 min the chuck in the malt and some more hop, bring back to boil then take it of the heat and chuck it the fermenter with the kit. stir like crazy. take up to 18lt. check temp and add clean ice or water to 23lt and 25deg +- 2deg. Pitch dry yeast from the HBS.

It may seem backwards but it will work and give good beer.

Otherwise, use more water as you may be caramelizing the wort (cooking the sugars)

 

[Stuster]

Or add the majority of the malt extract only 10-15 minutes from the end and you won't get so much darkening. But really I agree with Brewtus. Keep it simple for now, and you can do more complicated things later. It sounds like you have the sanitation side of things under control, and are getting good yeast etc. Don't give up now that you are doing so many things right.

 

[Pandreas]

BYB, Thanks for info but I added more hops to compensate for that which I lost...

Tyred, to answer your questions, The wort was still a much darker colour than I wanted when diluted, very dark amber / red.

I only added 1 kg of DME at a time to the water, but it was too small an amount of water, just 2 litres... As Brewtus suggested, by using a small amount of water I could have caramelized the sugars. Well, I'm sure that this happenned and is the BIG error I made today.


I only used 2 litres of water due to the fact I am constrained by the small(ish) cooking pot I used. Will invest in a a large stock pot next time, avoid a boil over, a lengthy clean up and have a decent beer rather than this caramelised wort....damn!

Thanks for your help Brewtus, answered my question well regarding mistake in my methodolgy. Don't want to use kits however, as even with my limited experience, I prefer to be more in control over the process. Will have a great outcome eventually.

Cheers

 

[Brewtus]

If you use liquid malt it cost not much more, has more choice and you don't need to dissolve it so no lumps. coopers and Morgans make it and you can even look in the spread part of the supermarket and get Saunders LME.

Edit typo.

 

[bconnery]

You also need to have the water boiling before adding the malt extract.

I used start my steeping grains in cold water, very slowly bring them up to about 75C, and then strain into my boil pot, usually adding a little more hot water. At this stage you need to increase the heat. You want a nice boil.

Once this is boiling start the hop additions, with perhaps a small amount of extract for efficiency, stirring carefully to avoid boilovers.

For a light recipe add the extract at around 10-15 minutes, a little at a time, stirring vigourously to dissolve. With enough water and good stirring you can usually easily dissolve 500g to 1kg dried at a time. This can vary based on the quality of the extract as well. I've bought extract from one store that dissolved like candy floss on the tongue, and one from another that needed a great deal of stirring, and I would add only in 250g approx. amounts.

I'm pretty certain you replied about my post with a guide on extract brewing, please feel free to let me know if the method was lacking in clarity a little. I did batch it together from an earlier guide on another method so it could have had gaps...

I've brewed a lot of beers using this method, and plenty were light enough, not pilsner light, or hoegaarden light, but light enough.

 

[xknifepointx]

Tonight I'm drinking my brews that taste like crap and reckon I've got another crap brew on the way..... Wonder if a decent home brew is a myth...lol

Cheers,
Patrick.

join the club, I'm waiting til tomorrow to bottle my Coopers Pale Ale kit beer, used the Pale Ale can of malt and supplied yeast with 500g Light Dry Malt, I was hoping to get at least 5% alcohol but I think I didn't use enough Malt or perhaps I should of added something else to it.

I'm drinking my first brew and have been all week just so I had some bottles to use for my next batch, this brew tastes awful, but after a few it does the job of getting you hammered, haha so at least that's not all lost!

 

[PostModern]

2L seems like very little water to add 3 kilos of DME to. The boil would have been very thick and syrupy, I imagine. Your hop utlisation would have been next to nil. Use the biggest pot (or two) that you have in the house and increase your boil volume. That will help heaps!

 

[boingk]

Pandreas, don't want to be sounding contrascending, but your first attempts at brewing sound pretty ambitious. Fair enough, if you know what you want and the methods to go about it then go ahead, by all means - but what i'm saying is you may want to start simpler. As my fourth brew, what you're doing would have daunted me.

I started out on basic kit and kilo recipes, with a 10 minute steep of 12g finishing hops to top them off. Now I'm doing some specialty grain steeping along with the same basic 'kits & bits', and am enjoying the results so far [am up to my 10th brew].

My best batch so far has been a Heineken [2nd brew, mates raved about it], also a Bavarian Lager [4th brew] that was quite enjoyable. My basic, basic message is that if you want to make good beer, you need to build a foundation for making it on, much as you can't build a spire roof on a church without building the foundations first. Again, I'm not trying to denegrate you, I'm just saying you *may* be trying a bit too much too early.

 

[0M39A]

from what i can read, you're only doing a 2L boil with 3kg of malt extract and 150g of crystal steeped in it... this is far too much sugar for only a 2L boil.

isnt it something like 1040 the best gravity for boiling hops to get the most out of them?

you wouldnt need anything near 3kg of malt in it. like pomo said, wouldnt it be just a thick syrupy goo?

before you think about doing extract brewing again, get yourself at least a 10L stockpot. you dont need to do a full boil, but with a 10L pot you can at least boil up half your fermentables and get a decent rolling boil going for the hops.

 

[Brewtus]

I'm drinking my first brew and have been all week just so I had some bottles to use for my next batch, this brew tastes awful, but after a few it does the job of getting you hammered, haha so at least that's not all lost!

Go to the supermarket and buy two boxes of coopers pet bottles. You need at least 90 bottles to run a home brewery. 150 is better. Then you can let the beer condition. Also, go an buy a 20lt plastic jerry can and use it as a secondary so you can get the beer out of your primary and let it settle before bottling. No need to drink just to empty bottles.

 

[boingk]

Well said brewtus! I was thinking that drinking to empty bottles was a bit strange...although I have done it as an incidental on occasion when a bar night combines with needing bottles for brewing :beerbang:

I've got two fermenters, and stagger them for end of week and mid-week bottling when supplies are low [ie: now!], otherwise I'm planning to rack to secondary. As it was with one fermenter, I was barely getting by with ~90 bottles. I've got something like 130 now, and think around 150~200 would be needed for optimum conditioning times and maximum brew variability.

Weird thing is that all this is taking place in my student room in my dorm! Doesn't need any space at all - if I can do it pretty much anyone can is my guess.

 

[brettprevans]

Go to the supermarket and buy two boxes of coopers pet bottles. You need at least 90 bottles to run a home brewery. 150 is better. Then you can let the beer condition. Also, go an buy a 20lt plastic jerry can and use it as a secondary so you can get the beer out of your primary and let it settle before bottling. No need to drink just to empty bottles.

90 is a absolute minumum. Hell Im only just back into (completely rebuilding my stocks from scratch) and Im already up to about 190. That gives me about 13.7 slabs worth of capacity. I still think I need more bottles becuase I want to age a lot of my dark beer. (God I wish I could affiord a keg system and lots of kegs).

Brewtus is right about getting jerry cans or cubes for secondary fermenting/conditiioning. Fresh wort cubes are good if you can get them (generally about 17L capacity). Otherwise bite the bullet and buy some big bottled water containers from supermarket/camping store. Use the fresh water in your brew then use the container as a storing unit.

 

[tommy cooper]

this does how ever sound like caramelisation to me the pot isnt big enough and the water was too little .
as an experiment try it again but with say 10 ltrs of water and a big pot.
you can always disolve the dry malt in cold water first and add this to the 10 on the stove to rid yourself of big bolderous lumps .

and bring on the heat slower to avoid caramelisation. i also read that malts do darken abit when boiled as well.

tc

 

[Pandreas]

OK....

I know now what to do next time.... Learning from your mistakes is what it's all about and I'm not going to be daunted by this failure and will continue experimenting with and improving my methodology for all-extract brewing.

1. Will definately buy a 15l stock pot,
2. steep the grains in at least 2-4l water from cold,
3. increase volume of water to 10l,
4. bring to a rolling boil,
5. add hops gradually as per recipe,
6. Take off the heat and add DME up to 1kg at a time
7. return to boil for only 5-10 mins, to stop wort darkening too much.

How does this sound? better methodology or am I still missing something?

My caramalized brew is going along very nicely, the CPA yeast I have grown has formed the best looking krausen I have yet to see. What do you reckon this caramelised brew will taste like....burn't? Is there a style of brew available that deliberately caramalises the malt sugars before fermentation? (Clutching at straws this brew may be redeemable!)

Thanks again for all your help!
Cheers,
Patrick

 

[RobboMC]

Just an idea to possibly redeem a caramelled brew, how about dropping in a handful of dry hops into the fermenter. A large proportion of beer enjoyment is the aroma, and this will create a hoppy aroma. If it's meant to be a Pale Ale try cascade or fuggles.

 

[Pandreas]

Can I just throw the hops in on top of the krausen? or should I wait until fermentation is almost complete and most of the yeast has gone dormant before I throw in some hops?

 

[phonos]

You're better off sticking them into your secondary fermenter and racking on top of them (if you have one). Otherwise wait til the fermentation has died and stick them in your primary fermenter. Otherwise the aroma will be lost along with the excess CO2 from the fermentation