First attempt at extract with steeping grains

[ProjectBeer]

Well, I took a sample on Sunday and there was no change in the SG - still sitting at 1017.

Now I've got my fridge up and running, I may cold crash this batch.

Since I want to dry hop for 5 days - do I cold crash after the 3rd day of dry hopping or after the 5th?

 

[clibit]

Let it dry hop 5 days before you cold crash.

 

[ProjectBeer]

Cool, thanks @Clibit! I was planning on bottling this weekend, so will have to push back bottling day to Tuesday next week if I dry hop today.

Going to stick the hops into a fine mesh bag with some ceramic baking beads to weigh it down. Gonna get those and the bag boiling now!

 

[clibit]

Dry hopping for 3 days is ok, if you want to bottle at the weekend. Some people prefer 3 days.

 

[ProjectBeer]

Is there a huge difference between dry hopping for less time? I've read that longer than 7 days can lead to vegetal flavours, but will there be a downside to leaving them in for only 3 days?

I'm not overly fussed by moving the bottling back to Tuesday after work - shouldn't take that long!

 

[clibit]

It's all about how long pieces of string are. It depends on the hops themselves I guess, 5 days will obviously extract more, but 3 days will be less prone to vegetal flavours, and it might not make a huge difference either way, but I think 5 days is a good length of time.

Does that help? :whistle:

 

[ProjectBeer]

Yea that's kinda what I was thinking - there are too many opinions out there about what is best or what people usually do. I'll just have to experiment and see what I like. And if that means finding a recipe I like and repeating it a few times then the only thing losing out may be my liver :)

 

[ProjectBeer]

Damn....seems I underestimated how many ceramic beads to throw into the hop bag....the bag is floating.....

Should I fish it out and add more or just leave it to minimise the possibility of contamination? I might look for a large stainless steel nut for next time, too much faff with lots of beads

 

[clibit]

Cutlery, glasses, etc. Just leave it. Give it a good stir around.

 

[ProjectBeer]

Just wondering if it's possible to correct the colour of this batch at all...

I bookmarked this link a while ago and re-read it this afternoon and it's got me thinking.

At the bottom of the article it mentions adding colour in the fermenter or even bottling bucket. You do this by steeping some black malt in water to make a malt colour extract, then bring it to 77C to sanitise it before adding it to either the fermenter or bottling bucket.

I realise this would affect the FG slightly, but I was thinking I could perhaps add this to the bottling bucket with the priming sugar solution before racking to the bucket to ensure that it's all mixed in and the colour darkens.

It seems to make sense on paper, but is this a dumb idea?

 

[clibit]

You can do it, it will hardly affect the gravity, but you need to let it ferment out before bottling.

 

[ProjectBeer]

Bottling day tonight!

I cold crashed my beer fridge from Saturday evening, so it had 3 days at cold temps. I set my fridge to 2.5C and it seemed to do the trick.

I sanitised everything, took the FV out of the fridge and positioned it where I wanted for racking. I left it about an hour whilst I ate dinner, put bottles in the dishwasher cycle and cleaned and sanitised everything. I put a smaller fine hop bag in some boiling water, which I then zip-tied onto the end of my auto siphon hose (the end that goes into the bottling bucket).

I was aiming for about 2.3-2.4 volumes of CO2 and so I boiled 123g of dextrose with 2 cups of filtered water and added it to the bottling bucket.

Racking to the bottling bucket was SO much easier than before. Having a hop bag and cold crashing meant minimal sediment went through. In fact there was a minuscule amount captured by the bag on the hose. The trub was nicely compacted at the bottom and barely moved when I tipped the FV to get the last bits. I removed the hop bag and squeezed it out into the bottling bucket. Not sure if that's best practice, but it felt right at the time.

I'm actually glad I didn't decide to alter the colour in the bottling bucket because the liquid was actually pretty damn dark! I think when I took samples from the bottom valve of the FV, there was yeast in suspension that lightened the colour of the sample. I took a picture to compare the Beavertown Black Betty I was drinking against the bottling bucket first runnings (I fill the little bottler with sanitiser before attaching it to the bottling bucket and run it off into a glass until only beer comes through). It looked good!

Bottling was a cinch. I had my bottles freshly sterilised from the dishwasher, my bottle rinser, and capping station all set up.

After everything was bottled I tried a glass of the leftover beer from the bucket that wouldn't fit in a bottle. It was surprisingly sweet, quite noticeably so. I hope bottle conditioning dries it out a bit more.

Lessons learned from the whole process:

- I now have a temperature controlled fermentation fridge, so I will be able to avoid wild swings in my wort temp (23C high and 16C low!!).
- I will rehydrate my dry yeast before pitching next time - not sure why it didn't attenuate as well as I thought. FG was 1017 vs the expected 1011. Although, my OG was 1064 vs expected 1058 and the difference between that matches the difference between the FG exactly, so maybe I need to make sure I hit my OG next time? Maybe this is why it tasted sweet at bottling?
- Remove bottle labels after I drink a bottle. I cleaned and removed labels for about 25 bottles when I got home today. Such. A. Pain.
- Never use ceramic beads to weigh the hop bag down...picking those buggers out of the hop debris was a chore!
- I might zip-tie the hop bag instead of tying a knot in it to allow more room for the hops to dissipate in

 

[rodabod]

I tried a glass of the leftover beer from the bucket that wouldn't fit in a bottle. It was surprisingly sweet, quite noticeably so. I hope bottle conditioning dries it out a bit more.

I guess that given the slightly higher than expected final gravity, this may be further converted during bottle conditioning. Just make sure you keep them warm enough! Having said that, I'd be careful with going as high as 23C. I've noticed some belgian-like fruity flavours in some of my previous brews at 22C which used US-05 and Nottingham yeasts.

 

[ProjectBeer]

I guess that given the slightly higher than expected final gravity, this may be further converted during bottle conditioning. Just make sure you keep them warm enough! Having said that, I'd be careful with going as high as 23C. I've noticed some belgian-like fruity flavours in some of my previous brews at 22C which used US-05 and Nottingham yeasts.

It was a lot sweeter than the samples I had been taking towards the end of fermentation - perhaps that's just the effect of the priming sugar?

Yea I was a little annoyed at the temperature spike that occurred on a particularly sunny day a few weeks back followed by my panic wrapping it in a wet towel and leaving the window next to it open overnight resulting in a drop to 16C the next morning.

Since that episode, the FV actually kept at a constant 19C (sod's law after me buying a fridge and building a temperature controller!). I've put my bottles in the same spot, so it should be relatively constant at 19-20C.

 

[Covrich]

- I will rehydrate my dry yeast before pitching next time - not sure why it didn't attenuate as well as I thought. FG was 1017 vs the expected 1011. Although, my OG was 1064 vs expected 1058 and the difference between that matches the difference between the FG exactly, so maybe I need to make sure I hit my OG next time? Maybe this is why it tasted sweet at bottling?

Could it be your Hydrometer needs calibrating and is a bit out?

What cycle in the Dishwasher did you stick your bottles in for?

 

[ProjectBeer]

Could it be your Hydrometer needs calibrating and is a bit out?

What cycle in the Dishwasher did you stick your bottles in for?

I did think that, and tested it in water and it came out at 1.000

Either way, I'll see how it turns out, nothing I can do about it now :)

My dishwasher doesn't have a specific cycle, it's just got like 4 different load/temp settings. I used 70C as that's high enough to sterilise. I washed out all the bottles when removing the labels and I use a bottle rinser filled with sanitiser. The dishwasher is just a fail safe, plus it saves me getting a bottle tree.

 

[ProjectBeer]

Also, the reason for the higher OG was that there was more loss than expected from the boil and I decided not to top up to the planned 23 litres (I topped up to 20 litres) in favour of a higher ABV.

 

[Cwrw666]

70c doesn't sterilise anything. That's pasteurising temperature which gives the bugs a big set-back but doesn't kill them all. 100c for 20 minutes is supposed to do the job but personally all I've ever done is rinsed my washed bottles out with boiling water. No other sanitisation at all. And even what I do isn't quite right - I fill 3 bottles with boiling water, then tip it into another 3, then another, then another. By then the water temperature is way down. By the way I've never had an infected bottle of beer after doing this.

 

[Spapro]

I rinse my bottles out with a little water straight after pouring a pint - to get rid of the sediment. When I have a few stacked up I clean them out with a bottle brush in a sinkful of warm water (no soap or washing up liquid used at all). They go on a bottle tree to dry then stored. Just before bottling I sterilise them with starsan. Never had a problem with infection.

Oh, and well done on the brewing fridge - not really got room for one myself (until my eldest kid moves out) so a bit jealous of those with the luxury of one.

Good luck with the brew, hope its great.

 

[ProjectBeer]

@Cwrw666 - Sorry, you're right, the dishwasher just ends up sanitising the bottles, not sterilising them. But I'd like to think I've got a robust enough system set up to hopefully prevent any infected bottles (none so far, knock on wood).

@Spapro - the fridge actually doesn't take up much space! I bought a cheap one off ebay and made a thread about the build here. I've only realised now that having a fridge like that next to the TV is a bad thing....I want beer all the time now!