Starting a new recipe

Kaboom!
Bottle bombs are at best messy, at worst dangerous.

No activity in the airlock does NOT mean it is done fermenting airlock activity stops before the yeast are done. You need to get stable gravity before you can know it’s done. Also Recipe times are good guesses, but still guesses.

Still a drop of 0.020 seems pretty bad after 2 weeks. It’s either a bad reading or something else effed-up since you say it’s not sweet, then bad hydrometer reading fits best.

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I would guess it would be the latter since this is my fifth go around and I haven’t had any inadvertent explosions. In fact each bottle I have opened seemed fine. A good amount of “smoke” and a little hiss when the bottle opened. Not much other than that.

My suggestion would be to brew a couple of more kits, paying close attention to OG/FG readings. With the one gallon kits and a recipe calculator, the estimated values (from the software) and the actual values should match closely (within .002 or so) – assuming your water levels are at one gallon. Review the recent threads here on refractometers. Do a forum search on “forced fermentation test”.

While you’re doing that, put together the chocolate coffee oatmeal stout recipe you wanted to try - it’s a fun experiment.

For learning more about recipes, @uberculture, @loopie_beer, and @voodoo_donut each had an initial reply that is excellent.

I’ll offer Randy Mosher’s book Mastering Homebrew as a follow-on book to Brewing Classic Styles. Chris Colby’s new book “Home Brew Recipe Bible” is also an interesting option to Brewing Classic Styles.

The way i do. I got a idea. Most the time at 3 at night. Long live insomnia. On what i want. Put the idea on paper. Than work it out with calculator. Than move everything to. Brewsmith. See if it does come out. Or tweak here and there. Untill happy

From a slightly different perspective, I started with online recipe calculators, but moved away from them as I wanted to learn the math that models the brewing process. The math, even IBU approximation, isn’t hard to understand - but the math can be tedious when building the initial recipe. However, after the initial recipe is build, the minor adjustments are a single calculation that can be done in the time it takes to power up a computer (or launch an cloud connected app :slight_smile: ).

There are many ways to brew it well …

Maybe so but but …080 beer will generally take more than 2 weeks to ferment especially if you kept the fermenting temperature down. They may not taste sweet depends on the recipe. I’m sure they popped and hissed because they are carbonating problem is they will keep carbonating. Hey I’m just putting it out there. IMO you may have gotten a stalled fermentation which can happen with high gravity beers that have been under pitched. What size batch did you make and how much yeast did you pitch?

I ended up with about 2 and a half gallons after using two one gallon recipe kits. I used on whole packet of yeast, but did not pitch it beforehand. I just poured it into the wort once it was about room temp.

I would have pitched minimum 3 packs of dry yeast maybe 4 if it was indeed .088

Wow, really? The recipe that comes with each kit only calls for half a packet. I just used that as a starting point and since I was doing to kits I just doubled the amount of yeast. I guess I could try more the next time around. I used a 5 gallon bucket to ferment, so there would have been room for the expansion that would happen during the fermentation, I am just concerned with a potential bomb going off with that much additional yeast.

Both kits the rum runner? In that case, the recipe called for 2 gallons at 1.088. Since your volume is 25% higher, your gravity being somewhat lower makes sense… so 1.067 is probably close. Your final gravity, though, is what’s confusing us all. It could be a combination of not doing a refractometer conversion, poor yeast health/attenuation, etc. It’s really hard to tell exactly what’s going on there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a combination of a couple of our theories.

Next batch, come up with a plan and run it by us first… we’ll walk you through it step by step and get you headed in the right direction.

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It’s not the yeast it’s the sugar. Use one of the online yeast calculators for pitch rate. Keep them cold and don’t give any away.

Just as a matter of preference, do you normally start your yeast in a bowl of warm sugar water, or pour it right into the cooled wort?

If you mean dry yeast yes I generally hydrate if it’s close to the pitch rate if it’s more than enough yeast I may sprinkle on top. Don’t hydrate with sugar water just warm water.

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For a one gallon kit, a half packet of yeast is an over-pitch. So the one gallon kit process doesn’t scale up gracefully in some areas (yeast, starting water rates, …)

But, in general, this …

… is a really good idea. And there’s a number of smaller batch (less than 5 gallon) brewers who are lurking out there with interest.

Out of curiosity, for those here who have used coffee in a recipe, do you normally brew the coffee before adding it to the wort, or do you include fresh coffee grounds in the bag with the grains when you are steeping them while the water is heating up to a boil?

I have seen one video on youtube where the individual was making a coffee stout. They brewed basically a concentrated batch of coffee in a french press prior to adding to the beer between fermentations. In this case the individual did two fermentations before bottling.

I cold brew(grounds in cold water) the coffee the night before brewing and dump into the wort with 5 min to go.

I put grounds for a pot in at 5 minutes left and it works. Also have brewed a pot and added to secondary. Both good results. Best way to nail the flavor would be to add at bottling/kegging

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When you add it directly to the wort is it just poured right in, or do you use another muslin bag, so you don’t have to strain prior to transfer to the fermenter?

I’ve done both. I put the grounds in a paint strainer bag just like I do my hops when added to the boil. If I were planning another beer with coffee addition I’d do my addition of cold brewed coffee prior to packaging after doing an extensive taste test. Coffee can be overpowering with relatively small amounts added.

How big are your batches compared to the amount of coffee you are adding?