First brew questions

[Lambros the Stout]

Hi all

I did my first brew recently (Black Pearl stout) and used the one can rather than both. I have now bottled it and stored, and in theory waiting to taste it in a couple of weeks.

Since joining and browsing through pages I realised I have made some errors:

- I did not use an airlock at all. I shut the lid of the fermentation bin and there is a small hole on the lid where I was supposed to put the airlock. The stout was fermenting for 4-5 days and I primed and bottled after 7 days. I suspect this might have been a fatal mistake, can anyone give shed some light whether it will have definitely gone or should I still leave the bottles for now?

- The yeast that came with the kit was "Gervin English Ale Yeast". Since I was only using one can I used half the sachet. I also did it as in the instructions which said to sprinkle it over rather than the instructions on the sachet which said to mix it with some of the stout and then throw in the fermentation bin. Are any of these major faults?

- I used twice the sugar for priming my stout. I did as in the instructions and dissolved 80g of sugar (instead of 40g) in warm water then once cooled added it to the fermentation bin before bottling.

Any comments on the above? I suspect the airlock might be a fatal mistake but I don't know how to check this.

Thanks for your help on this :drunk:

 

[RobWalker]

Big breweries don't use a lid. Your only real risk is infection before fermentation starts and after it, considering it was a stout it was probably quite vigourous! Afterwards, co2 sits on the top protecting it from infection, so you should be okay. Airlocks are useful, but not essential, I used to just stuff kitchen roll in the hole instead.

How much did you make? You should always use a full packet of yeast for 23 ltr batches. Sprinkling is fine, don't worry.

As for your bottles, you might run the risk of over carbonation. Stouts are usually quite flat so you'll probably end up with lager fizz with the extra sugar, any more than that and your bottles might start exploding - hahah.

 

[jonnymorris]

What volume did you make up with your one tin? Assuming you made half the suggested amount, i.e.12l then I think your only real issue could be bottle bombs as suggested above. Were they glass bottles and are they out of harms way?

 

[Lambros the Stout]

Cheers both

Ok, so I might have got away with it after all (maybe!). When I sampled the beer just before bottling it did not taste much like a stout but since it was the first time I wouldn't know how it should taste before the conditioning.

I made half the quantity I should have done (11.5 litres) and I have used plastic PET bottles. So far so good... No explosions as yet!

One more question: The instructions say allow the stout 4 weeks in the bottles, with some time being in a warm place (20ish Celsius) and the rest somewhere cooler. However, it does not say how long at each so would 2 weeks at each do?

Also, a "cooler" place (13 Celsius) does not actually exist in my flat, unless the weather takes a turn for the worse. Would this work in my fridge?

Thanks again

 

[jonnymorris]

Two weeks in the warm will be fine. The longer you can leave them to condition in the 'cold' the better. A general rule of thumb, according to G Wheeler, is to allow one week for every 10deg of gravity, i.e. a beer with an OG of 1040 should be allowed 4 weeks to mature.

Fridge will be fine, assuming you have space.

 

[Lambros the Stout]

Well, now that I have left it for a bit I have some answers.

The beer was matured in the 'warm' for 2 weeks and then been in the fridge for 9 days. I opened 2 bottles so far: One after a week, and one yesterday (3 weeks after bottling).

The one after one week went into Vesuvius mode when I opened it. However, the one yesterday had no issues and made a lovely head.

Personally, it was not that great for two reasons: Too much fizz (I prefer my stout without fizz) and it was quite a bitter stout although I don't know whether this is what the kit is supposed to taste like, or if its the water, or something else.

However, pretty happy with my first brew. Am bottling my second batch today (I have added golden syrup and coffee to my Black Pearl) and am considering adding sugar to some bottles and not adding to some so that I can see the difference.

Cheers :drink:

 

[Molineux]

Hey dude, welcome to the forum.

First of all, I would say the most useful tool available to the Modern Homebrewer would be the Hydrometer. I'm assuming you took a reading before pitching? I'm not going to explain their use here because there are loads of post about them on this forum and I don't want to insult your intelligence if you already know.
Most days I walk around my fv's with a clipboard taking readings. It's great fun. The other day I put on a white apron and my Mrs glasses, occasionally tutting and shaking my head, I had her in stitches!

Anyway,
Yeast. Don't think of this like a recipe. Think of yeast as infecting your batch. I can't remember the reason but the amount in a sachet is a good amount to start with. So, say if you need 177 billion yeast cells to create a good beer in the average time, that sounds a lot to create doesn't it? Not really because almost all yeast cells start mitosis or budding after pitching. This happens anywhere between every ten minutes and two hours depending on the yeast.

So, if we introduce 100,000000 yeast, they split into 200,000000 then 400,000000,800,000000,1.6Billion, 3,2B, 6.4B, 12,8B, 25.6B, 51.2B, 102,4B And so on..