Hitting the wall

[azztech]

Well I'm beginning to understand why I see so many HB folk selling their gear on Gumtree...

I'm up to my seventh brew and I've had really mixed results. Some brews taste pretty awful, some taste okay but have a really low ABV and only two batches are good all round. Not a great batting average when 50% of my motivation to get into brewing was a cost saving over the carton or so commercial beers I was drinking per week.

I have all the right gear (for extract) and haven't skimped at all (insert 'all the gear and no idea' joke here). I can only put it down to average-to-dud recipes and general inexperience.

My original vision of having a storeroom full of beer i'd love, is fading. When I looked in there last night, I was thinking "how do I get rid of all this mediocre beer - don't really want to drink it".

So tell me, does everyone hit the wall? If you press on, chew your way through your shitty beers, do you one day get a few brews down to a fine art and it's all worth it?

Lend me your inspiration, chaps

 

[mxd]

you need to figure out where your problem is. A great percentage of my initial problems were fermenting.

Get a fresh wort kit, (ideally from a LHBS that has a sample of it on tap) then ferment that out.
If that works out the same, then it may be your recipe.

get jamils book for 80 classic styles then use that.

Join a brew club or enter into comps to get feed back as there may be other issues.

 

[wobbly]

Give some indication of your process such as fermentation temperature, ingredients, recipe details, how you manage hop additions, water treatment to get rid of chlorine and chloramines etc

You say a couple were "good all round" what was different about those to the other five or so

Have you tried fermenting a "fresh Wort Kit" to see what results you get from that

See of you can get someone like BribeG to chip in with some advise

Cheers

Wobbly

 

[siege]

Really solid advice above.

But if it's solidarity you're after: YES. I'm sure most of us have suffered from "why is all my beer shit"

In addition to my first two small batches that were rubbish because I didn't control ferment temp, I've had a full 23L that I just hated the taste of, and two that were sour. And not in a good way.

It was a lot of beer to tip put and hours to bottle it and it hurt at the time but it's pretty easy to get over it when you do start getting really solid beers.

Just stick with it. (but also follow troubleshooting advice. Everyone can always improve something in their process)

 

[hellbent]

"I have all the right gear (for extract) and haven't skimped at all (insert 'all the gear and no idea' joke here). I can only put it down to average-to-dud recipes and general inexperience."

I also agree with mxd on getting a fresh wort kit from your local HB shop and see how that goes.
Also as it seems extracts are your go maybe jazz them up by adding a few hops etc. or maybe even try AG (BIAB) brewing, it's cheap enough to set up and once you get the process mastered you will find a huge difference in your beer in both head and taste.

Sometimes people think their beer is crap, they may have been expecting something very similar to a wqonderful boutique beer produced from a mini brewery they once tasted. Well let me tell you that just doesn't happen that often, there is a bloody lot of "mongrel" beer out there being brewed by people who swear it's the best beer ever made and backed up by his desperate mates who turn up to help empty his "free" keg then piss in his pocket saying how wonderful the beer was.

Don't give up mate just hang in and keep trying and ask lots of questions

 

[Tahoose]

Read, read and read some more.

It takes a while but it's like any hobby you need to arm your self with the knowledge and inevitably have a few ****-ups to learn from.

If you have a question on something, use the forum search first and most likely the question has been asked before. If not, ask away.

The great thing about this forum, and I've been on a few. Generally people are here to share experiences promote ideas and everybody wants to be drinking quality beer.

I'd be going with a tried and tested recipe, such as dr smurtos golden ale. This can be done in the kit/extract form or as a grain mash. Use a neutral yeast and get a handle on you fermentation temperature. Temperature of the the beer after it has been bottled is important also.

See how you go with that then reassess.

Good luck!!

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

What recipe are you using ?

What are you trying too brew ?

No1 Golden Rule for new brewers

Use a simple recipe

Use some base liquid malt, some steeped Xtal ( about 500gm ) and 1 or 2 hops to 30-35 IBU ( POR early & SAAZ late go very well )

This will give you a nice simple Pale Ale and it will be nice and clean in flavour which you can learn from. Its pretty hard to screw it up

Practice will be your friend

And dont chase ABV. That will come when you get things right

 

[Blind Dog]

If your ingredients are fresh, your technique is sound, you have a rigorous cleaning and sanitisation regime, you have a decent recipe and have temp control, then you have pretty much all you need to brew good beer. Active learning can then make them bloody good beers.

I've made some absolutely crap beers, had infections, stuffed up about everything you can stuff up, spent more $ than SWMBO will ever forgive me for if she ever finds out, but still loving this hobby.

There is a learning curve, as there is to any activity in life, and it's really up to each of us where we want to end up on that curve. I have one mate who is perfectly happy brewing Coopers kits and his beer is awesome. Like you he brews mainly to save coin. Me, I love brewing AG and brew and tweak beers over and over mainly cos I love the recipe development and the brewing process; the drinking is secondary (just).

Knowledge is a big component and I love to read and practice. Randy Moshers 'Mastering Homebrew' is (IMO) the best primer around not just because it's full of useful info, but also because he has a fairly unique take on things. For $10 or so on kindle it's a bargain. If you want a physical copy, I've found book depository great as the prices are reasonable and include shipping.

Good luck

 

[Judanero]

Can you please provide a little more info regarding your fermentation/sanitation/actual brewing process?

Temp control and correct pitching rates for your yeast is a big factor that will help with your final beer flavour, great advice about getting a FWK to help isolate your problem.

FWIW whenever I have brewed an ordinary beer I have still drank it- as a pseudo penance for making a mistake... which is all an ordinary batch is, a mistake (sometimes multiple) along the way.

I keep and always have kept immaculate records of every brew day including recipe, temps, volumes, times of additions etc as well as anything that didn't go to plan. Looking back at some of my early beers and their tasting notes I can now pretty well identify where they went wrong, from wrong amounts, fermenting temps, yeast selection, hop selection etc. and I don't think there has been any brewing slip up I haven't learnt from.

Stick with it, you can nut out the problem and be producing great beers for a whole lot cheaper than buying commercial craft beer.

 

[Lager Bloke]

I agree with all the above comments.Craft Brewer do various wort kits + brilliant for advice,also their bar is basically next door-I think they have some if not most of the FWK on tap.All in Brewing at Banyo sell FWK's + beers on tap(no affiliation to either)Also have found this forum a wealth of information-as someone said previously 'Search' is your friend.
Rob.

 

[Rosscoe]

Mate as far as my experience went, i had half a dozen brews and a similar experience until i found a great local home brew store and started getting some advice on how to improve. The biggest thing a new brewer has to learn is that little things that might seem unimportant like fermentation temp or what sanitiser you're using make a huge difference.

As said above, it's hard to give too mush advice without more info on what you're doing buddy, but if you read more and get some solid advice, you'll push through it. I made some that I had to tip down the sink, but got through that. Also, bear in mind that beers in bottles, especially kit beers, get better over time. In fact I'd say that with what you're most likely brewing, you'd almost certainly want to leave your bottles for at least 6-8 weeks before drinking. This means you need lots of bottles, but it's pretty fun collecting them[emoji1]

 

[wobbly]

If you are having trouble sorting out the basic recipe for either a "Kit and Kilo" or "Full Extract" you could do a lot worse than have a look at/use IanH Excel Recipe Spread Sheet. It can be found at the bottom of post #1 in the following topic:-

http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/29655-kit-and-extract-beer-spreadsheet/

Cheers

Wobbly

 

[azztech]

Literally had my entire brew story sitting in the reply when the power went out (tranny blew on the pole out front) and lost it all... Won't go into as much detail on the iPhone..

So many questions! I think we've missed the mark in some replies though. Essentially I know what went wrong in the brews (mostly thanks to replies in this forum). It was mainly crap recipes (some from LHBS and some by experiment - what I had lying around). The point is I've bought ~ $1K worth or brewing hardware, bottling and now kegging kit and I've made one, maybe two brews that are not either lolly water or bloody awful.

I think I might steer away from the LHBS recipes and get a better source. Most of the disappointments derived from there. I'm not surprised my one own experiment was shit, but even then I was surprised how bad it really was.

All my brews are clean and san, temp controlled and with good quality ingredients (most full extract). I know time helps, but even that's a pain sometimes - one ale I actually liked was better at 2 weeks in the bottle than 4...

I've made lagers, ales, stout, pilsner, all with proper Saf or MJ yeasts - except my first brew, that was kit beer and kit yeast and was one of the right off's..

But again I digress. I will keep chipping away at it. Just frustrated by my first half dozen or so batches. Only really had one ale that I've really enjoyed... Guess I had no idea making beer would be such an art.

I've read a lot, and YouTube'd my arse off, but I imagine there's lots more to learn. Suspect it's just experience and I'll know when a recipe doesn't look right in time.

 

[azztech]

Oh, and my latest balls up? over-carbed a keg.. I managed to de-gas it to a sensible level, but now it's tainted with that bitter CO2 taste.. FML

 

[droid]

we learn from our mistakes, help us find yours, pick one of your failed brews and put it up here: replace the orange with your info

there are mistakes below and questions to be asked and i brewed like this for a time - you're not alone.

style = pale ale,
ingredients = 1 x coopers australian pale ale tin, 1 x coopers brew enhancer, 40gms hops, 23 ltr brew, expected abv 5%
process = heated up cooper brew tin to make extract soft, put brew enhancer into some hot water to disolve, boiled some hops for an hour, strained the hops and put all together and mixed up to 23ltrs, the sticker on the side of the keg was reading somewhere around mid to high 20's, sprinkled on some good yeast, put in the cupboard with lid on and air lock
fermentation notes = bubbled hard for 48hours then nothing, left it for 2 weeks, took the lid off and had a whiff (burnt the old nostrils a bit) - had a look at it, the surface was nice and clear, didn't bother with taking a gravity sample, it was done
bottling notes = primed each bottle with the right amount of sugar, bottled off the brew, capped it and put in spare room at ambient temperature, left it two weeks
tasting notes = no fizz, tastes like wet cardboard, sherry like with a noticeable twang, very bitter - can't see this getting that much better over time to be great
tasting notes = 2 weeks later ~ so now one month in the bottle, a nice "pop' when opened, not as bad a twang but still there, very full tasting in the mouth i wonder if the beer got down to a Final Gravity of 1012 as it tastes very full and gummy, very bitter
tasting notes = went back to this brew after 8 weeks, fizzy beer, can't really describe the off flavour but the beer is full in the mouth and very bitter, won't brew that style again


If you could give/hand over these sort of details ~ which of course means showing us your warts and all,...

stick with it mate!

 

[sponge]

As above - process of elimination.

Grab a reputable FWK and ferment out. Most FWKs are very nice so with the hard work (wort) done for you, all you need to do is ferment and keg. If it turns out nice then you know it's in your recipe/ingredients/process. If it turns out shit then you know it may have a lot to do with your fermentation process.

The biggest improvement to all of my beers came from proper yeast handling and temp-controlled fermentation. A big healthy pitch of yeast, lots of oxygen and controlled ferment temps including diacetyl rest and cold-conditioning.

It's easy making great wort, it's a lot harder making great beer.

 

[manticle]

What do you enjoy drinking?
Can you give a few examples of beers that have been wrong and why?

Is it mostly kegging gear you've outlaid so much on? $1k+ seems eccessive for most extract needs.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

So tell me, does everyone hit the wall? If you press on, chew your way through your shitty beers, do you one day get a few brews down to a fine art and it's all worth it?

Lend me your inspiration, chaps

Take heed of a lot of the posts above, whatever questions you have got has been asked before and there will be an answer somewhere on the internet, read up and recognise where you may be falling over, you may be finding it hard going now but eventually you will find it is harder to make an awful beer. Never give up. 'If you think you are beaten, you are' Like some of those who sell their brewing gear. Quitters.

 

[azztech]

What do you enjoy drinking?
Can you give a few examples of beers that have been wrong and why?

Is it mostly kegging gear you've outlaid so much on? $1k+ seems eccessive for most extract needs.

My kegging setup was around $600 with a few kegs, cylinder, upgraded lines, SS gun etc. and my brewing hardware and bottling hardware easy total $400+ but bought a heap of grolsch tallies also. That doesn't include my chest fridge and temp control either...

Edit: I like Bud, Guinness and most craft beers too.

 

[Grott]

Your next brew, why not tell the ingredients and quantities you intent to use, and step by step the processes you intent to do to produce your brew. By doing this persons on this forum will be able to check off those ingredients/processes and thus help to achieve a great outcome.
Cheers