Hi everyone, I am currently doing my first brew with the deluxe starter kit and after finishing bottling, I noticed that I had an extra gallon of beer leftover which doesn’t seem right. I also noticed that I definitely had over 5 gallons of beer when it was in the bottling bucket. I have to wonder if measuring 15 inches on the side of the carboy was actually 6 gallons rather than 5 gallons. I followed all instructions exactly with the Bavarian Hefeweizen that the kit came with. Any suggestions for what might’ve happened here?
A couple things come to mind, but it could be a number of things. One would be as you hint at, incorrect measurement. A simple way to measure out five or six or whatever number of gallons would be to get a gallon milk jug clean it well, and use that to measure out whatever number you’re looking for. I wouldn’t absolutely trust the measurements on the side of the buckets unless I had ground truthed it with more precise measurements.
Another would be a minimal or weak boil during the process.The boil doesn’t have to be to vigorous as in splashing onto the stove, but should be enough to look like “a babbling brook”.
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Great thank you for the advice. I will definitely take what you said into consideration. I definitely think I could’ve boiled it more, I tried to go for a “rolling boil” but it wasn’t exactly the strongest.
Welcome to the world of home brew. Mistakes will come but be patient and learn from your mistakes. Let everyone know how your first batch turns out.
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Thanks for the kind words. I definitely will when it finishes carbonating in two weeks. My initial impressions, from an uncarbonated taste, seemed to be that it tasted pretty good.
In the future start with the gallon(s) of water in your pot the recipe calls for when finished. You will end up with a lot less than that added to your fermenter but you will top it off with water and bring it back to the final amount, in this case 1 gallon.
Don’t count on exactly two weeks for carbonation. Could be shorter but more likely two weeks or longer. One trick you can try is to get one PET (plastic) bottle, an actual PET bottle made for beer would be nice but a soda bottle will work. You will be able to feel the bottle firm up as the beer carbonates.
It helps if your bottles are in a warm place. 60s to ferment is nice but 70s will help carbonation along.
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Thank you for the ideas. I’ll definitely have to implement this going forward. I don’t suppose there’s any tricks if all the beer is bottled in just glass bottles other than opening one and checking it?
Test one 1 week then 2 weeks after bottling but refrigerate it for a few days. It takes a while for the CO2 to be absorbed into the beer fully.
