weak beer

[megaschnauzer]

dangit! i just brewed an all grain ale kit and i used to much water in the sparging process. my specific gravity was 1.031 instead of the 1.047 like the instructions said. i have about 6 gallons instead of the 5 required. i've already fermented in the primary & moved to the secondary. it tastes weak at this point. this is only my 2nd all grain batch so every mistake is a learning experience. what are my options? should i press on and bottle it or should i experiment? the thought of a rapsberry ale is appealing. should i try making another kit and use less water and blend the two batches?

[Stodbrew]

If it still tastes good, go ahead and bottle it and you've got yourself a nice session beer.

[mmmBeer...]

Boiling it down would cause the alcohol that is already in the beer to evaporate, just like when you cook with wine, the alcohol disappears. You would end up with an even lower alcohol level.

[L.H.H.H.Brown]

Yup, all I can say is learn from your mistakes and brew another batch.

[megaschnauzer]

i checked out some other recipes and the time was right to add fruit so i crammed about 4lbs of raspberries into my secondary fermenter. we shall see. on another note, has anyone ever taken all their leftover grains and made a batch of beer with it? did it turn out ok?

[Caffinehog]

Just grab a pound or two of malt extract, boil it up, cool it, add it, and let the yeast do what they do best.


If it must be grain-only, you could mash a couple pounds of grain, drain off only the mash water, and concentrate that down in place of the extract.

Oh, and your leftover grains won't contain enough starch or enzymes to make more beer. You can make good bread out of them, though. One of our local breweries sells the spent grain cheap to the bakery across the street.

[bierboy]

I would just drink as is or blend it.

[Fast_Eddy]

Originally posted by megaschnauzer
dangit! i just brewed an all grain ale kit and i used to much water in the sparging process. my specific gravity was 1.031 instead of the 1.047 like the instructions said. i have about 6 gallons instead of the 5 required. i've already fermented in the primary & moved to the secondary. it tastes weak at this point. this is only my 2nd all grain batch so every mistake is a learning experience. what are my options? should i press on and bottle it or should i experiment? the thought of a rapsberry ale is appealing. should i try making another kit and use less water and blend the two batches?

Next time check your OG while in the kettle. It it's too low - up the heat and boil longer.

It's pretty easy to figure out how much you would've needed to evaporate off to hit your OG.

If the beer was 1.031(at a volume of 6 gallons) and you wanted it to be 1.047 then:

31*6 = 186 gravity units

186/X = 47( 47 is the target OG gravity units)
x = 3.95

Another way is :

(31/47)*6 = 3.95

So you would've needed to reduce the volume to approx 4 gallons to hit you target gravity. Of course adding extract is another way to up your gravity.

[stronk]

I would have suggested adding a fair amount of belgian candy sugar (basically hard caramel). It's easy to do and it would create quite a nice heavy mouthfeel.

Here's a recipe:

http://oz.craftbrewer.org/Library/Methods/Sanders/candy.shtml

[toneyc]

I brewed a shiner blonde clone weekend before last and missed the target gravity by 12 points. I got 1.036 instead of 1.048. I put it in primary and forgot about it. This last Saturday, I was browsing through the pantry looking for something to munch on when the honey jar caught my eye... So I boiled some water and dropped the plastic container of honey into it to warm it up a bit. Boiled some more water and topped up the container with boiling water. Let it cool down a bit and racked my weak beer into secondary with about 1.5-2 pounds of honey added. Now I'll have honey blonde ale!

:)
Toney.

[bierboy]

Are you guys batch sparging or fly sparging?

[toneyc]

I think that I am fly sparging, sparge water in at about the same rate as wort out. Why?

:)
Toney.

[Stumptown]

I think that he asked about batch vs. fly sparging because with batch sparging it would be hard to run off more wort than you expected unless you completely blew your math in the original calculations. Just a guess.

One possibility for missed OG may be from not knowing the efficiency of your set up (something you can't know until you've run a few batches through).

For instance, if you try a recipe that was created by someone with a system that has 85% efficiency, but your system is 70%, you are going to be extracting less good stuff from the same amount of grain and wont make the numbers. I always run a recipe through beertools or promash based on my system's efficiency to see where I need to come out. Usually I have to add a pound of grain or so to make up for my systems lower efficiency and hit that target OG.

A good procedure to use is to always check gravity before you start your boil.

Like all brewing, it's a live and learn type thing. A lot of "mistakes" actually taste pretty good.

[Fast_Eddy]

Originally posted by Stumptown
I think that he asked about batch vs. fly sparging because with batch sparging it would be hard to run off more wort than you expected unless you completely blew your math in the original calculations. Just a guess.

One possibility for missed OG may be from not knowing the efficiency of your set up (something you can't know until you've run a few batches through).

For instance, if you try a recipe that was created by someone with a system that has 85% efficiency, but your system is 70%, you are going to be extracting less good stuff from the same amount of grain and wont make the numbers. I always run a recipe through beertools or promash based on my system's efficiency to see where I need to come out. Usually I have to add a pound of grain or so to make up for my systems lower efficiency and hit that target OG.

A good procedure to use is to always check gravity before you start your boil.

Like all brewing, it's a live and learn type thing. A lot of "mistakes" actually taste pretty good.

This problem was definitely extraction not runoff amount. He would've had to reduce to 4 gallons to hit his target.

I would like to see the original recipe though - maybe like you said it expected a ludicrous extract efficiency.

[megaschnauzer]

It was a combination of poor efficiency, to much water, and inexperience. I dumped all my sparge water in the cooler expecting the grain to have soaked up a lot of the other water. Anyway, I came out with 6.5 gallons of wort. Having made that error, I should have boiled longer to reduce my volume, but I didn't. What I did do was put 4 lbs of raspberries into the secondary fermenter. It's been there for a week and I'm preparing to bottle. It tastes good but I don't know what the alcohol content will be. This is my second all-grain attempt. I'm trying a third batch this weekend. I figure if a batch doesn't get infected and it has alcohol in it, it's probably a success.

[Fast_Eddy]

Originally posted by megaschnauzer
It was a combination of poor efficiency, to much water, and inexperience. I dumped all my sparge water in the cooler expecting the grain to have soaked up a lot of the other water. Anyway, I came out with 6.5 gallons of wort. Having made that error, I should have boiled longer to reduce my volume, but I didn't. What I did do was put 4 lbs of raspberries into the secondary fermenter. It's been there for a week and I'm preparing to bottle. It tastes good but I don't know what the alcohol content will be. This is my second all-grain attempt. I'm trying a third batch this weekend. I figure if a batch doesn't get infected and it has alcohol in it, it's probably a success.

Too much water in the mash(ie too thin of a mash) will result in poor conversion and, hence, poor extraction.

The total extraction at 6.5 gallons was still too low - even if you had boiled it down you only extracted enough to have 4 gallons at the correct gravity.

Next time - try a little thicker mash (1 qt/ 1 lb of grain) , mash at little lower temp(mash temp after dough-in 150 F), and a little longer mash(1 hr 15 min). Also, take your time sparging and be sure to use sparge water that's around 170F. I guarantee you'll get better results.

[bierboy]

Originally posted by toneyc
I think that I am fly sparging, sparge water in at about the same rate as wort out. Why?

:)
Toney.

Your sparge water could be channeling in the grains. THis means that it is not rinsing though the enitre grain bed, but only part of it. This would give you a much lower effeciency than predicted.