Huge Foam Head on my kit brew

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I didn't buy that stuff anyway....I read into it and it looked ok. But as Churchill or rather a piss take of his quote said, 'We will bite the foam on the features'. xD
 
Hi all,

This brew has slowed right down - my hydro reading are showing 1.019 - from 1.022 on the 13th so slowing down - I am hoping this will keep going - I raised the fridge temp 2 deg c couple of days ago to see if this would move thing along as it seems to have slowed a lot - current temp 20 c. USo5 range supposed to be from 15 c. Just wondering if this is normal as at this rate it will still be going well into week 3 and I planned to dry hop as well. Is this due to the extra stuff I put in? (see start of thread). A taste of the sample seems ok and not too sweet. Will have little left if I keep testing at this rate!!
 
Your beer is still fermenting. If it's at about 20*C it will be fine. Someone said US-05 takes a long time, some yeasts do that, others don't and can be finished in a few days. Basically it will be finished when its finished. Your OG at 1.047 has only had a small impact on the time it is taking relative to a slightly lower SG say 1.042. My advice is to forget all about it for another 3/4 days then retest the SG if its still going down leave it longer. It won't do it any harm to leave it in the FV. But I suggest you back off adding your hops until the SG has bottomed out. And in the meantime try to keep the lid on.
 
Hi All,

Today the beer reached 1.010 so I decided to add the dry hops - 30g Citra and 30g Cascade. Just before hopping I had a good look at the beer and there is an awful lot of stuff "suspended" in the beer - not noticed this before. It looks like a lot of very fine sand - I haven't moved the FV so not disturbed anything - is this normal, ok or has something gone wrong. It has spent 2.5 weeks in the FV so far. Going to leave the hops in for 5 days then cold crash for 48 hours to try and clear it a bit.

I am doing the right thing or have I gone about this the wrong way - hoping I am going to get something drinkable at least!

Cheers
 
15 -22 deg
Glad your beer is doing well. I wouldn't worry about the particles. They should fall out with time/cold crashing.
Just a heads-up on the US-05: Fermentis has the ideal range at 18-28. Now, you may have read info from people very experienced but I've always found the manufacturer's site to be the numbers to follow.
 
Thanks Dave, I thought I had read the range was from 15 - 26c so I guess it was too low - will have to be more careful in the future with my experiments!
 
Bit of an update on this experimental kit brew.

When I bottled this I did a couple of small 330ml bottles as samplers - turns out to be a good idea. I tried one today even though it still has a couple of weeks to go. Very clear and the batch priming seems to have worked well although I think I could still go a bit higher on the carb - I calculated it to be around 2.6 co2 - but the beer was excellent! It had a lot of hop aroma and when tasting it also had a great citrus flavour. The most satisfying outcome was no home brew twang - the first Coopers kit was very twangy so I think using a different yeast, controlled temp and dry hopping worked a treat. I dry hopped with 30g of Citra and 30g of Cascade.

This tastes like a commercial beer to me and whilst this is a lager kit it tastes exactly like the Shipyard Pale Ale and the Citra from Oakhams - over the moon with the outcome of this experiment and will be doing it a lot more. Would recommend doing this if you like those hoppy beers. Looking forward to sucking it all back in a couple more weeks.

Thanks for all the help and input.

Dave
 
Been drinking this and it's lovely! one thing though, the hoppy taste and aroma is lessening - not gone and still v nice but was wondering would a hop tea cause the hoppy taste to last longer as I have read? anyone done both dry hopping and a hop tea and noticed a difference.
 


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