Honey Beer Question - Infected?

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GSRman

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Monday night i made up a batch of self-styled canadian honey beer, basicly,

1x 1.7kg can of coopers canadian blonde
1kg of honey
350gms CSR brewing sugar.
10gms challenger hops boiled for 5 mins with the honey.

I pitched about 1L of wyeast 1084 irish ale starter,

Last night (thursday) i had a wiff of my airlock (which has been bubbling away consistantly since tuesday morning) and it smelt odd, sorta beery, but also a bit 'sour' for want of a better word.. almost citrousy.. it didn't have this smell a couple of days ago..

i got up this morning and had another smell, it smells different, not as potent, but i was a bit worried about it still so i thought i would do a gravity test, so i drained off a testable amount, managed to turn the tap completely the wrong way to turn it off.. cleaned up the mess and tested, it read 1028ish, now it only had a starting gravity of 1042 but im now not so sure that the starting gravity was correct... its a 23L batch...

I tasted it, and it still was a bit sweet, and didn't taste *BAD* but im still not sure what to think..

do you think my SG reading is correct with those ingredients?

isn't it fermenting a bit slow?

its been sitting at 18 deg mostly, however the first night it dropped to 16...
 
GSRman

Sounds fgine to me.
You normally get one smell for the 1st stage of ferment - like as the yeast reproduces aerobically.

You then get a different smell - slightly tarty, sour etc as the yeast goes thru the second stage - anerobically producing alcohol.

Hope this helps
 
i guess this smell is normally covered by the hoppy smell, but i haven't got that with this (its going to need some in the secondary)

Incidentally, i was thinking of boiling 15G of saaz in a half-litre of water for 5 mins or so, and then straining and adding just the water.. so i dont have the filtering out the hops problem.. think it will work ok?
 
IMO - Hops boiled in only 1/2 ltr of water..i think you would be wasting them.
Once the water has reached saturation point with the hops- no more will be absorbed.

Also, are you adding the hops for flavour/aroma or for bittering.

I think 1/2 hour is too long for aroma/flavour and not long enough and in enough water to achieve bittering.

I would dry hop in the secondary. I can make you a pre keg filter with a racking tube - come round saturday and pick one up...

Hope this helps
 
well i only want a bit more flavouring (and because i have a heap more variety in hops now, and i wanna play), i think i have a bit of a plan as far as filtering goes anyway.
 
GSRman said:
well i only want a bit more flavouring (and because i have a heap more variety in hops now, and i wanna play), i think i have a bit of a plan as far as filtering goes anyway.
Ok,

When you are ready - please share the filtering idea around.
 
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