First brew mistakes

southernstar

Well my first brew (first extract brew - first home brew in 15 years) and according to my internet research this will likely end badly.

I dry hopped a HBC America Pale Ale with an oz each of Citra/ Amarillo. I had everything ready, bottles etc sterilised. I put in 110 grammes of glucose in 50 ml of water.

Went to syphon it into the bucket and covered both ends with a Muslin cloth to filter out the pellet particles (I didn't cold crash). I didn't stir the wort to make sure the glucose was mixed into it. The syphon was working very slowly - about a gallon had been transferred after 2 hours .

I was wrecked and had to go to bed so I left the syphon running with the top uncovered. I got up at 6 this morning and the transfer had stalled at 10 liters so I had to get it going again. The only way I can get the syphon going is with my mouth btw. After an hour of it barely moving I took the muslin cloth on the bottom off and the rest of the wort (10 litres) poured out in about 2 minutes.

So I'm expecting a poorly carbonated beer (from half of it spending 10 hours primed in the bottling bucket) that is very possibly infected from all the handling/ exposure its had.


The beer itself has a strong aftertaste - you can really taste the bitterness. Is this normal? The dry hop has not had the overwhelming/ fresh effect I was expecting.

adamski8

Well there is plenty to learn anyway, not much you do at this stage, just wait and see how it turns out. The biggest lesson i think is if you have these muslin bags why didn't you put your hops into them for the dry hopping stage instead of putting them around the syphon.

southernstar

adamski8 wrote: »

Well there is plenty to learn anyway, not much you do at this stage, just wait and see how it turns out. The biggest lesson i think is if you have these muslin bags why didn't you put your hops into them for the dry hopping stage instead of putting them around the syphon.

yep this is what a first grow is for!

I did loads of research on this - read that pellets are better for free floating than leaves, that they sink, and that you can use the bags to filter for bottling. its supposed to be better extraction of the oils, more surface area etc.

sharingan

But then hop debris will clog up your siphon.

If you are using loose hop pellets you need to cold crash the beer.

southernstar

I'll be bottling my second batch on Thursday - will cold crash then.

Looks like the first batch is carbonating in the bottle so all may not be lost.