Intro & Alcohol measurement query

[ciderlover]

G'day gents,
My father used to home-brew beer, wine & the occasional spirit when I was a kid, so now in my late 40's, I decided to have a go for myself. Anyway the wife bought me the Coopers DIY kit from BigW last week. I started the brew that same day and have been monitoring it every day.

The day I pitched it was quite warm and the wort temperature was 30 deg C with an OG of 1.350

On the 3rd day I removed the krausen collar as instructed by the DVD, and the SG was 1.180 @ 24 deg C then I took SG readings every day which had stabilised at 1.160 @ 22 deg C so I decided to bottle today as it was an unseasonably cold day (only 21 deg C) for Brisbane. The aroma was quite fruity but yeasty at the same time, with a nice and dry taste, just the way I like my beer & ciders - not a fan of the sweet stuff. By the way, I'm anything but a beer connoisseur, I wouldn't have a clue what the difference between a Lager & Ale is, or the different beer flavours and varieties, but hope to change that as I progress into my 50's and beyond.

So anyway, out of curiosity I decided to calculate the alcohol volume of my brew, but came up with 24% alc.vol!! That's the sort of alcohol level in fortified wines, surely my brew can't be that high can it?

Cheers,
Pete

 

[dammag]

You are actually talking about an original gravity of 1.035 and a final gravity of 1.016 to give an alcohol percentage of around 2.5%.

The original gravity reading may be low because not all the sugars may have been dissolved when you took it. I think with kit beers OG's are best worked out theoretically using one of the available calculators.

The calculated alcohol also has to have the alcohol added by bottle carbonating added to it. typically around 0.5%.

If you are keen to brew there is a wealth of information here and elsewhere on the 'net and you can make great beer quite easily.

 

[ciderlover]

Ah thanks for that, looks like I was missing the extra decimal place. So it's going to be a mid-strength brew. Can you tell me though, does the secondary fermentation further increase the alcoholic content, or is that it?

 

[warra48]

You don't need "secondary fermentation". Your beer will ferment some more with your priming medium after bottling as part of the carbonation process, and give you about 0.5% additional alcohol. Don't be tempted to increase that because you'll just create bottle bombs.
I'd advise you to not check the gravity of your brew each day, there's no need to do that.
Just try to keep the temperature of your brew down to about 18 to 20ºC, and leave it for about 2 weeks. The yeast will continue to do nice things for your beer, even though it appears to have fermented out.
Check the final gravity at that time, and if it's within the expected range and stable over 2 to 3 days, then you're right to bottle.
Also, do yourself a favour and download some brewing software such as BrewMate (it's free but a donation would be welcome). It will help you to calculate your expected starting and final gravity.

 

[pat86]

You could also check out "how to brew" by john palmer. Very good read and there is an older free version which can be read online if you don't want to buy the book yet.

Also, for your next brew just follow warra's simple advice re. Temperature control. I think that would make the single biggest difference for a beginning kit brewer. Good luck!

 

[Nizmoose]

You could also check out "how to brew" by john palmer. Very good read and there is an older free version which can be read online if you don't want to buy the book yet.

This. I started brewing not long ago and read palmer's book from start to finish. You come out the other end with a much better idea about what you're doing and how to do it

 

[ciderlover]

Thanks for the tips gents.

I found and downloaded BrewMate and had a bit of a play with it, but it looks way too advanced for me at the moment. I might see if I can source that brewing book first so I can learn the basics.

Today I pitched my second brew, a Brigalow branded apple cider, so let's see how this one goes. The weather here in Brissy is perfect for brewing at the moment.

Funny thing, I popped into my local hobby brew supplier yesterday to buy some Star San, and went for the one litre bottle. When I got home and read the dilution instructions, I was blown away at how little you need to make a useable batch of the stuff. So I ended up going to the supermarket and getting a 10 litre cask of filtered drinking water, and and added about half an ounce of the sanitiser to it, then filled my spray bottle with that. Mate this stuff is going to last me for years!!

 

[ciderlover]

Been reading Palmer's book on brewing, wish I had that before I started. Anyway a quick little update. The lager bottles have been in secondary fermentation for just over 2 weeks so this morning I popped one in the fridge for a test with dinner. Well, the result is not good. When I tasted it during bottling it wasn't too bad, but when I opened it this evening the taste was depressingly sour Also it had no frothy head like a normal beer, the bubbles were large and disappeared quite quickly (like flat lemonade) revealing a flat brew that left a sour/bitter taste in the back of my tongue, very unpleasant. Given it has only been in the bottles for 2 weeks, should I leave for a little while longer, will it improve or is it gone and I should just dump the lot?

In hindsight this was my first brew in a virgin kit so I didn't sanitise anything, just rinsed with hot water, also I kept opening the lid to have a look every couple of days. The PET bottles I did sanitise with StarSan but I think the brew was probably already in the early stages of infection

I have two other brews fermenting at the moment, an Apple Cider & a European Lager, here's hoping these two turn out okay.

 

[TheBaron]

I'm fairly new too so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems that regularly opening the lid of the fermenter to 'check' the beer is a pretty good way to get an infection. I did this with my first beer and noticed some off flavours (especially sourness) that weren't present in my second beer. It sounds like you might have got an infection?

It's probably still worth leaving it for another couple of weeks to see if it improves.

 

[pat86]

Ciderlover maybe post the recipe and also all of your process for the lager and people can try to determine if it is infected.

Knowing the final gravity would help and you could also pour a glass, leave it to go completely flat and check the S.G., I am not sure if it is always the case, but infected batches at least sometimes continue to ferment to very low gravities, such as 1004-1006 for what I am guessing should have been a pretty normal beer finishing around 1010?

If the batch is bottled in glass and is infected, you might have potential bottle bombs, so either refrigerate them until you know or make sure they are safely covered in towels/ boxes etc.

 

[ciderlover]

I like to keep detailed records of my brewing attempts so here's what I have for this first brew.

Extract: Coopers Lager
Brew Date: 26-04-2014 @ 5:30pm
Water Vol: 23L
Sugar Type: 1KG Coopers Brew Enhancer
Can Used By Date: 07-09-2014
Yeast Sachet Number: 24712
Wort Temp Pre-Yeast: 30DegC
OG Pre-Yeast 26-04-2014: 1.035 @ 30DegC
SG Reading on 28-4-2014: 1.024 @ 24DegC
SG Reading on 30-4-2014: 1.018 @ 22DegC - Removed Krausen Collar
SG Reading on 01-5-2014: 1.017 @ 23DegC
SG Reading on 02-5-2014: 1.016 @ 23DegC
SG Reading on 03-5-2014: 1.016 @ 22DegC
FG at Bottling: 1.016 @ 21DegC
Bottling Date: 03-05-2014 @ 4pm
AbV: 3%
BIX: 6.5

Open test bottle date: 13-05-2014 - SG 1.014

I made the video below to demonstrate how it pours and looks:

http://youtu.be/kO3NXBM5O2Q

Cheers!!

 

[gap]

Are you using a refractometer to measure your fermenting beer?
If so you need to use correction tables to allow for the error
caused by the alcohol in the fermenting beer.
You cannot use the raw readings from the refractometer.

 

[ciderlover]

Are you using a refractometer to measure your fermenting beer?
If so you need to use correction tables to allow for the error
caused by the alcohol in the fermenting beer.
You cannot use the raw readings from the refractometer.

No I strictly use the Hydrometer to do my SG measurements during the fermentation process, in fact I use two (the plastic Coppers one & an older glass one) and take the average between the two readings. I only got the refractometer last week and still learning to use it, but thought I would post the above image for anyone interested. As a side note, I calibrate the meter with plain water before taking a real measurement, also the refractometer's instructions claim that it auto-corrects for ambient temperature, however except for ABV, I'm not familiar with what the other scales represent.

 

[warra48]

The auto correction on the refractometer is for the ambient temperature of the sample you are measuring.
It does not correct for the alcohol level in a fermenting or fermented beer.
You need this scale to adjust the reading.

 

[ciderlover]

Thanks for that Warra48. You'd think they would include something like that with the refractometer :unsure:

Anyway, I think I might leave the bottles in the cupboard for a couple of weeks and do a taste test on the weekend. In the mean time I need to buy another FV so I can kick off brew #4 an English Bitter :kooi:

 

[ciderlover]

Afternoon gents,

My European Lager is now ready to bottle, however I was wondering... Do any of you use twist-top beer bottles, do they seal properly when you cap them with a regular crown seal cap or should I only use regular pop-top bottles only?

 

[warra48]

I use both types of bottles.
My local HB shop at my last place in Port Macquarie sells different bottles caps for screwtops and rolltops. The metal in the screwtop ones is a little thinner, so you don't need quite as much pressure to cap the bottles.
However, I've used both interchangebly and not had a problem.