Suthrncomfrt1884
Well-Known Member
Nice read. You mentioned having trouble with the liquid extract because of thickness... did you soak the can in warm water before opening it? If not...it works great.
Also, I did one more substitution than I had mentioned before... when I was ordering my LME, they didn't have "light". I ended up going half and half with amber and extra pale. I expect that my beer will be a little darker because of it, but I doubt that will be an issue.
Thoughts?
That's amazing you came out with a 1.100 reading. That thing is going to be a beast. You will be glad you made that starter and threw in some yeast nutrient, it will really help to break down that monster of a beer.
My guess is that your gravity readings are off. The only reason I say that is because kits are usually right on the money as far as starting gravity. There's nothing you can do to squeeze that much more fermentable sugars out of it. Even if you have steeping grains, there's just no way...
Extract is very precise on how much potential sugar you will get out of it.
I pulled a gravity reading last night, after three weeks in primary. 1.015, so fermentation should be complete. I plan to leave it another week in primary to clean up a bit, then I'll rack it to secondary for clarifying, batch aging, and opening up my primary for the next brew.
I'm going to leave this one for at least two weeks in secondary before I bottle. I wonder if I'd hurt anything by leaving it a full month?
Incidentally, even though my sample did have some hop gunk in it, it was surprisingly tasty! Sweeter than I expected, but not at all cloying, and smoother than I was expecting (no bad alcohol bite at all)... I am really excited to see how this one turns out.
I had worried a bit that I had scorched the LME; I knew that I had perhaps come close, and my original taste on brew day was fairly bitter, even smoky. That's all gone now.
That's good to hear it turned out well. Were you able to control your fermentation tempuratures? That seems like it would really helps keep a lot of the esters and strong alcohol tastes down.
I left mine in a secondary for 2 months before bottling it. A month won't hurt, and batch aging will really help the flavors of this big beer come together.
Would I still need a starter for a 2.5 gallon batch?
Can someone put up some numbers about how they determined proper carb for this beer especially if you primed for bottling with maple syrup? I've got a huge "waterless" imperial maple brown going and I want to make sure it finishes right. Thank you all!
I have a blow off tube in this - and it still blew the bung out! Cleaned up, got the cork back in and it sounds like I'm on vacation at Yellowstone.
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