HomebrewandBeer.com forum

OH! The woes & worries of us novice brewers, the advanced members must get fed up with the same old problems, after reading some of the advanced stuff that you are into , I hesitate to ask advice on my humble offering, well here goes anyway.
it was a Coopers bitter kit straight from the supermarket and done completely by the instructions, it was not realy to bad considering, but before getting into the next one i want to know how to fix three things that where sadly lacking, 1, dissapointed with the alcohol % 3.4.
2, total lack of any hop flavour, and 3, rather cloudy could have done with a bit of clearing, apart from these problems was not to bad ,
any advice gentlemen ?.

Matty,
You mention about the tempreture affecting the alcohol reading. How does it affect it and what tempreture should you take your FG reading to work out the alcohol percentage. I find that my alcohol is down a bit at times on a few brews.


Ashy

The hydrometers that come with Coopers kits are calibrated to 20 degrees C. Some others on the market are calibrated to 15. Yours should have come with a little slip of paper that will tell you. You need to adjust depending on the temp of your brew. Again, check your hydrometers documentation, it should help. If you can't find anything there, post your readings and temps and I'll use my 'Beersmith' software to give you a reading.

Shawn.

dab123,

Just on your original post, there are a few things you can do without too much further investment to improve your brews. Do you have access to a decent homebrew shop? If you do, you should be able to easily access dried or liquid malt extract in bulk to replace the table sugar/dextrose that Coopers and most of the other kit brands suggest you add to the kit. A kilo of dried malt extract (DME) instead of table sugar will immediately improve your beer's flavour and 'mouthfeel' or body. Also try and keep your brew temps at the cooler end of the range for your yeast and try and keep them as steady as possible. Big jumps and high temps can lead to off flavours. If you have access to them you can also replace the kit yeast with a higher quality dried yeast like the safale/saflager yeasts or if you are feeling more adventurous a liquid yeast based on the style you are trying to brew. Maybe do a few more brews with dried yeasts first to get your technique down pat - liquid yeasts need a bit more attention.

As far as clearing your beer, buying another fermenter and some 10mm 'racking' (syphoning) tube will enable you to do two great things - get your beer off the original yeast cake before bottling which will help clear it up a lot, and 'bulk prime' which is not only a lot easier than individual bottle priming, but produces (in my opinion) more consistent, even results. Depends how keen you are at this stage.

Adding hops to your kit brew is easy and cheap as well. 'Dry' hopping will give you the most aroma, a quick boil can add some flavour with less aroma and a longer boil will add bitterness. Dry hopping is really easy and maybe worth a go first, especially if you are racking. You can just chuck, say, 20 grams of a low aa aroma hop into your secondary fermenter after racking, leave for at least one, preferably 2 weeks at reasonable temps and then bulk prime and bottle leaving the hop sludge behind. Or you can use your coffee plunger to steep your hops for 5 mins before adding to your fermenter if you are worried about the sludge not clearing. Both work well.

Anyway, hope these suggestions help. All are really easy tips to help improve your kit brews. You're on the slippery slope now mate...

Shawn.

Hi ya ashy,

This is the adjustments on the sheet that came with my hydrometer:

10'c 50'f -0.002
15'c 59'f -0.001
20'c 68'f none
25'c 77'f +0.001
30'c 86'f +0.003
35'c 95'f +0.004


Hope it makes sense


Matty

Gough has hit nail on head. I can't think of anything else except maybe some Irish Moss in the boil. Although it is to prevent chill haze, I have found it does help clear.

Get away from cane sugar (sucrose) and go with Dextrose.

Head will come with more unfermentables (sugars are 100 percent, malt 80). Additionally, keep a clean glass with no soap residue. This will stop the head from being nocked down

Dogger

Thanks lads for all the info, must admit I did not note the temp when the fg reading was taken , and am surprised that different makes of hydrometers give diff readings, so perhaps I am well out with the final calculation . in reply to Goughs advice, we do have a fairly well known brew shop in the area ( just the one ) so prior to the next batch I shall be paying them a visit for the ingredients you mentioned in particular the safale yeast , hops & dried malt extract. with regards to racking, my secondhand outfit came with two fermenters, a 60 & 30 ltr so will try that as well . thanks everyone, can't wait to get into the next one.
my only other problem is how does one make the wife understand that the correct order of priority is first the "BREW" then lawnmowing and other chores.

I've just done a 23 litre brew with 2x1.5 kg cans of extract plus 1kg of dextrose. The original SG reading was off the scale on my el-cheapo beer hyrdrometer, so it probably started off around 1050 and fermented down to about 1006 - which means I've got about 6%. Bottom line, the more fermentables you put in the higher the alcohol content.

Regarding clarity, I've found that plain old gelatine (also sold as simply "finings" in K-Mart and other places) works a treat. The latest brew had some added 48 hours before bottling, it still came out a little cloudy but after about a week just sitting there it's crystal clear (with a bit of residue down the bottom). A secondary ferment would have worked wonders - maybe next time.

For boiling hops, a good idea is to get a (muslin?) bag to boil it in so that the leaves don't get in your brew - strainers will get most but not all of it. Sort of like a giant tea bag.

Timeframes wise: For bittering, boil about an hour. Flavouring, about 15 minutes. Aroma, 5 minutes or less, or dry hop (as above).

A further thought has occured to me, regarding racking.
if I siphon from my 30 ltr ( that the brew was made in ) to my spare fermenter which is 60ltr, will all the empty air space affect the beer?.
Also, when fermentation is finished and ready to bottle or rack is there any advantage or disadvantage in waiting a few hours before removing the lid ?
Do you see what I mean about these beginners !!

Matty,
Thanks for that. I have measured my FG reading around the 20 to 24 degree mark so would not make much of a difference.


Ashy

dab,

Ideally both your fermenters would be of the same size. I wouldn't rack from the smaller into the larger fermenter and leave for any length of time because you will be exposing it to too much ozygen incresing the chances of infection and oxygenation. After pitching your yeast, oxygen is your enemy. Maybe you could try primary ferment in the bigger fermenter and then rack into the smaller. When fermenting, the process produces carbon dioxide that sits on top of your beer helping keep the oxygen at bay. In secondary your fermentation will slow right down and/or stop so more exposure to oxygen. It might not be a problem over a short time frame, but I generally leave my beers in secondary for two weeks or more at cool temperatures and I'd be a bit nervous doing that with so much headspace in the fermenter. When brewing lagers you cold condition the beers in the fridge for quite a few weeks and headspace becomes even more of a problem. I'm not trying to discourage you too much from doing it, just pointing out a potential problem. In the short term you can get away perhaps with primary in the bigger fermenter and secondary in the smaller. In time though it will be worth getting another smaller fermenter (or bigger if you are going to brew in 60 litre batches )

Best of luck,

Shawn.

Greetings

After pitching the yeast do you give the wort a good stir? Or just leave it be on top to do its thing.....Ive read conflicting advice and am not sure....

Cheers

Thanks gough for the follow up on this. so armed with notes on all that you advised, off went I to the brew shop, all the items you suggested where readily available, and the chappie agreed with all your comments , untill I mentioned that i intended to transfer the finished brew into another fermenter for a couple of weeks to aid in clearing it somewhat.
he advised against my doing that , as he reckoned the risk of infection at such a delicate stage was to high , and sugested that I go ahead and bottle as soon as fementation ceased.?
The outcome of this is that I now realise that I misunderstood what racking entails. I was under the impression that all I had to do, was to siphon my finished brew into another airtight vessel and leave it for two weeks with the added hops to settle before bottling, but it now appears that it has to be started up to ferment all over again, which surely must entail adding yeast all over afresh.
I do seem to be completely confused dont I !!!.
( can almost hear someone saying "Bloody beginners)

dab,

You don't need to start up any fermentation again after racking. I'm not sure what the HBS bloke meant by that. The whole point of racking is to let your beer 'condition' away from the primary yeast cake which can impart off flavours if left too long. It may still bubble along slowly which isd fine, but you don't 'restart' fermentation itself. Especially with Ales, and especially if you aren't worried about really clearing your beer then there is no need to rack if you don't want to. Bottle away. Racking does really help with clearing your beer and in 'conditioning' it - I guess stabilising the flavours and maturing it a bit is a good way to think about it. In lagers it is especially necessary because you are generally talking about paler beers which you want as clear as possible. Dodgy flavours are also much harder to hide in lager styles compared to big rich dark ales for example, and racking to secondary helps the yeasties clean up a lot of the weird flavours sometimes produced by primary fermentation.

If you can keep your secondary below say, 18 degrees or so, maybe 20 tops (basically as cool as is practicable), then your beers will improve in terms of clarity and flavour as long as you are clean enough to avoid infection, minimise splashing and bubbling when transferring, and can keep it in a vessel without too much headspace. That was all I was trying to really get across in my last post. Transferring 23 litres of recently fermented beer into a 60 litre fermenter and leaving for two weeks may cause problems due to too great an exposure to oxygen. Ideally your secondary fermenter should have as little headspace as possible. In my case I have 3 25 litre fermenters and use all 3 for primary, secondary and cold conditioning. In an ideal world I would have even smaller vessels for cold conditioning but so far no probs.

Have you checked out http://www.howtobrew.com ? David Palmer is a US homebrew guru and I think you'll find more than enough info on his site to help you out. You can get his book at most good HBS around the place too. Worth a look. His book and a few various web forums like this one have helped me move from kit and kilo brewing through extract 'n grain, partial mashing and now all grain brewing. There is a helluva lot to learn out there. I'm about to bottle my second all grain brew and am putting together the recipe for the next. Can't wait...

Good luck. Keep asking heaps of questions. Someone'll help you out.

Shawn.

As far as racking goes I use a visual rule of thumb.

When you start to ferment you will generate a yeast cap wich looks like crap. It is foamy and for all the world you will be thinking "what am I doing?" After about three days in the primary, that corruption will drop. It is now time for your first racking. Your wort will still be bubbling with lots of CO2, ensure everything is sanitized and transfer over. If your secondary is larger, don't sweat it, you sanitized and are using a good air lock and bung so explain to me where the bacteria infection will come from.

Additionally CO2 is denser than O2 so as it is being manufactured by your wort it pushes the O2 out and leaves a bed of CO2. This is more important to relieve oxidation pressures rather than lessen the risk of bacteria infection.

DOgger

Thanks once more lads for all the input, I am learning fast.
as a result of some indecision on my part i went ahead and bottled instead of racking though be it against my better judgement
( o ye of little faith) But as I realy do want a clearer brew , i have started another batch , and this time i am definately going to rack when finished primary ferment . by the way Shawn this one has all the ingredients you suggested, and I will take onboard a bit of reading up on this sibject .
Cheers one and all ,

Good one dab. Best of luck. Best thing about this hobby is finding out what works best for you and your tastes. No turning back now

Which ingredients did you get? What style are you aiming for this time?

Shawn.