leffe brune plus fruit-first AG

[kentish dave]

I mashed and boiled my first AG beer yesterday; a leffe brune clone to which I intend to add blackberries in the secondary.

I used the homemade mash tun and boiler following the instructions of 'Chard' on instructables.com. worked well I think. I will be pitching the yeast in a few minutes, it's from a wyeast smack pack and I am culturing a few testubes of it as well to freeze for next time.

one question: my recipe is for a 5.5 gallon brew, I folllowed this, I had 5 gallons in the boiler, and it was difficult to keep a continuous boil as there was a lot of splashing, lost a fair bit to evaporation leaving me with 4.5 gallons, I sparged the grains again to top it up to 5. I have tasted the wort (or is it 'barm' once hopped?) and I don't think it is especially strong. is it normal to add quite a bit of water to a brew after the boil to get back to your target volume?

I cooled it after the boil by sitting the bucket in a bath of cold water, with a 2 litre bottle of water floating in it and a wok full of water sat on top. not exactly efficient but I cooled it to room temp in under an hour. I now have a mountain of spent grain to bake into cookies.
The recipe was on the internet rumour mill and not verified so I am taking a ludicrous risk for a first go, I will post it if it works out but I am not going to spread bad advice.

 

[kentish dave]

balls! missed my OG by a country mile. should be 1070, actually got 1055. add malt extract?

 

[rickthebrew]

well done on the first brew dave :thumb: Its up to you if you want to up the gravity with spraymalt - i think i`d leave it - you still looking at a brew of over 5% It is quite common to add treated water to make your brew length what you intended, especially before you work out your equipments losses, I normally start with extra treated water for the sparge and chill it down to add if my volume is down ( backliquor)

It`ll be a great pint

 

[kentish dave]

cheers, I added half a small jar of malt extract, no spraymalt, it made bugger-all difference to the gravity. I think I have some leeway as there will be a secondary fermentation, so I can make slight adjustments there perhaps.
Pitched the yeast last night and came home to an airlock furiously pumping foam over the kitchen floor, so all is well with the yeast that I was a bit concerned about, as it was looking very lazy in the starter.

 

[rickthebrew]

cool keep us posted

 

[graysalchemy]

Have you added the black berries yet? I did an oatmeal port last week and added the juice of 500g of elderberries to 2 gallons in dj's in the primary fermentation. still going strong after 10 days!!.

Let us know how it turns out.

:

AG

 

[kentish dave]

I haven't added the fruit yet, just thinking, am I going to need pectolase and all that business? smush up the berries?
I haven't really given this enough thought.

 

[bolty]

I added some pectolase to a fruit beer I did recently (smushed fruit and pectolase added to the secondary). Turned out quite clear, but not polished.

Be warned, its a PITA if you are syphoning it off the fruit! Hopefully you have a tap on your FV.

 

[kentish dave]

Just sampling this beer as I write; it is a dissapointment. too thin, watery, not fruity enough, not 'beery' enough, too sweet. It had ages to ferment, I can't believe that it was under-fermented when put into the bottles; it hasn't carbonated in the bottles at all, which seems odd since it is sweet.
what did I do wrong?

 

[kentish dave]

BTW: had no trouble taking the beer off with a tap, in the past my kit brews ended up with a lot of yeast sediment in the bottles, this was a much clearer brew.

 

[rickthebrew]

Shame it didnt` work out how you expected Seems odd that it didn`t carbonate in the bottle - what did you prime them with? Have you brewed anything else since?

 

[kentish dave]

I primed with ordinary sugar, I was quite conservative with the amount as in the past I have tended to produce bottle bombs. not brewed anything since. I think the recipe may have been wrong in terms of the amount of water to use, the grain bill was perhaps for a smaller volume of beer?