dallyr
01-03-2004, 11:24 AM
Greetings to all. I've dabbled for a couple of years brewing small batches (1 to 3 gallons) of extract beer with good results. For Christmas I bought myself an upgrade and am now brewing 5 gallon batches. Part of the kit was the "Complete Joy of Homebrewing" in which I got really intriqued by the advanced recipies. I've got one batch of what I call Ginger Ale that I am concerned about. Its the first and so far only batch that I have attempted to use milled grains. Somewhere along the line I think I did something wrong. For this batch I also made the switch from pellet hops to whole hops. I'm pretty picky when it comes to sanitation so I'm fairly sure that is not the problem. My recipe is as follows:
4 lbs medium DME
1 lb Crystal Malt
1/2 lb Chocolate Malt
1 lb cane sugar
4 ounces Crystalized Ginger
1 1/2 ounces domestic nugget (bittering)
1/2 ounce domestic perle (finishing)
Followed all the usual steps of boiling the wort and getting it ready for the carboy (glass 6 gallon filled to 5). After 10 days of primary fermentation I racked it to the secondary plastic bucket. This is when I noticed a pretty strong odor. I took a deep breath of it over the bucket and just about fell over from the extra strong fumes. Tasting revealed extreme bitterness. Well, I pressed on with the secondary fermentaion for 4 weeks hoping it would mellow. No joy. It is still just as "sour" as when I racked it over. After research and reading through other posts I've come to no conclusions, but have a faint idea where I might have gone wrong. After skimming off the grains/hops from the cooling wort I was thinking what a great idea it might be to run water through it to make up the rest of the 5 gallons of liquid to fill the primary (all that great color). Is it possible or probable that I introduced waaaaaaaaaaaaay to many tannins into the mix? And if so, would that be the "sour" (lack of better word) that I have?
Any thoughts or your "war" stories would be appreciated. Meanwhile I'm relaxing and having a homebrew (+ watching the snow fall). Its not the end of the world if I lose this batch. I have 2 others (from Coopers premixes) in the works and a few in the bottle to enjoy.
4 lbs medium DME
1 lb Crystal Malt
1/2 lb Chocolate Malt
1 lb cane sugar
4 ounces Crystalized Ginger
1 1/2 ounces domestic nugget (bittering)
1/2 ounce domestic perle (finishing)
Followed all the usual steps of boiling the wort and getting it ready for the carboy (glass 6 gallon filled to 5). After 10 days of primary fermentation I racked it to the secondary plastic bucket. This is when I noticed a pretty strong odor. I took a deep breath of it over the bucket and just about fell over from the extra strong fumes. Tasting revealed extreme bitterness. Well, I pressed on with the secondary fermentaion for 4 weeks hoping it would mellow. No joy. It is still just as "sour" as when I racked it over. After research and reading through other posts I've come to no conclusions, but have a faint idea where I might have gone wrong. After skimming off the grains/hops from the cooling wort I was thinking what a great idea it might be to run water through it to make up the rest of the 5 gallons of liquid to fill the primary (all that great color). Is it possible or probable that I introduced waaaaaaaaaaaaay to many tannins into the mix? And if so, would that be the "sour" (lack of better word) that I have?
Any thoughts or your "war" stories would be appreciated. Meanwhile I'm relaxing and having a homebrew (+ watching the snow fall). Its not the end of the world if I lose this batch. I have 2 others (from Coopers premixes) in the works and a few in the bottle to enjoy.