Followed Brewers Best Instructions , what the **** is this **** ?

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FlyFisherman

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I'm a newbie to this hobby and decided to try the Brewers Best double IPA as my first batch.

First off I'd like to say that the instructions with this kit is vague at best and pretty much suck. I followed them as closely as I thought possible but the main thing I did not understand was the part where it says to try not to transfer the heavy scrub into the fermentation bucket and I think this is the part where I screwed up the batch.

What the heck do they mean by "heavy scrub" ? Not once in their instructions do they mention using filter bags when adding ingredients to the wort and they say to sprinkle the hop pellets right in. So I came into this forum and read in another thread that people were recommending that someone else should just dump everything right into the ferment bucket which is what I decided to do.

So to make a long story a little shorter, today I transferred the batch into the carboy for the 2nd ferment and have to say it looks like nothing I would ever even consider drinking a cup full of and it has a sour taste and smell(yes I tasted it). There was darn close to an inch of something accumulated on the bottom of the primary fermenter bucket which I dumped behind my shed. Now the batch is in the carboy and I can see so much stuff floating in it that it appears that 2 weeks will be nowhere near enough for it to clear, to me it looks like an awesome batch of homemade apple cider.

So I guess if I'm trying to ask one specific question it would be should I just dump it now or is it worth proceeding to the bottling stage ?
 
First off welcome to the hobby.

The instructions are kind of vague and outdated. Read on here and brew more and you will learn.

Transferring from the boil to fermenter is a choice, I personally dump it in but try and keep out the last bit of trub. Either way you wil have beer.

If your beer has a sour taste it might have picked up an infection. The stuff that usually comes with the kits is a cleaner only not a sanitizer.

Moving it to a secondary fermenter is something that most of the instructions still say. I'm not going to start an argument but many people do not move to a secondary. I would say I do 5% if the time for specific reasons. If you aren't really gentle moving it, you can oxidize your beer.

Don't pitch it yet, taste it again in a week or two and see what it taste like. If you really can't stand it think about getting rid of it. Otherwise drink it, it won't hurt you.
 
Relax.

Fermentation is not pretty. They meant heavy trub, not heavy scrub.

Not evreryone uses hop sacks for the hops. I usually just drop the hops in and then transfer it all to the fermenter. Afterr enough time it all drops to the bottom. No big deal.

The inch of stuff you saw in the bottom of the fermenter is perfectly normal. Give it enough time and all the floating stuff will fall out and the beer will be good. Taste changes dramatically with time. Most of us leave everything in the fermenter for 3 weeks.

Just step away from the fermenter, let the beer do it's thing and report back in a few weeks.. Then bottle it up and give it 3 weeks to carb up.

Relax....
 
Chalk it up to experience... most first brews go this way it seems. It's kind of like paying dues to the brewing gods. You probably have an infection, but you might also have a good sour beer in a few weeks or even a few months.
 
No no no, dont get rid of it. What this beer is now is NOTHING like it will turn out after its bottled. I taste my wort all the time just to see the way it evolves.

I've had beers taste awful after 2 weeks in the bottle, at 4 weeks they were fantastic.

Oh also That stuff at the bottom of the kettle (heavy scrub?) I just add it to the fermenter, no biggy. Its all preference.

Also that stuff at the bottom of your primary is called the trub. Its yeast, hops and byproduct gunk. Its very good for your garden and perfectly natural.

The floating stuff is also absolutely no big deal! Anything that gets added to bottles will all sink to the bottom and become a yeast cake, especially if you chill the bottles well after carbonation.
 
it just sucks knowing that I'm waiting 2 weeks for something that may not be any good

"The stuff that usually comes with the kits is a cleaner only not a sanitizer."

I believe I read that somewhere else on this forum. Why would they put that in the kit if it's not a sanitizer when they and the local home brew shops are indeed leading people to believe that it is?

My opinion of Brewers Best is that they're pretty pathetic, I know I won't buy anything from them again. As popular as home brewing has become it's hard to believe that there isn't someone out there that can put out a quality kit
 
beergolf said:
Relax.

Fermentation is not pretty. They meant heavy trub, not heavy scrub.

Not evreryone uses hop sacks for the hops. I usually just drop the hops in and then transfer it all to the fermenter. Afterr enough time it all drops to the bottom. No big deal.

The inch of stuff you saw in the bottom of the fermenter is perfectly normal. Give it enough time and all the floating stuff will fall out and the beer will be good. Taste changes dramatically with time. Most of us leave everything in the fermenter for 3 weeks.

Just step away from the fermenter, let the beer do it's thing and report back in a few weeks.. Then bottle it up and give it 3 weeks to carb up.

Relax....
Click to expand...

Yes I'm upset for now but I'll get over it in time. I've been lurking on this forum for a while and have read a lot of similar posts.

it's just that this can be a very time consuming process for us newbies and to think that our efforts could be for naught is a little frustrating.

I'd have to say I have at least 6 hours invested in it so far(2 hours cleaning the stove after boil over)

Who knows,maybe I'm getting upset over nothing
 
Oh no! Don't put the scrub in! :p

Yeah. Trub. It's fine. I dump the whole pot, scrub and all, into primary. You can bottle right out of primary and leave a lot of the scrub behind by:

-Not jostling the bucket around a lot. The scrub settles pretty tight.
-Use a cane, some call it a wand, with the little (usually) black foot on it. It keeps the cane out of the scrub and lets beer sort of go around it.
-Place your cane above the level of the scrub.

I usually secondary because. Just because. That's my reason.

And I'm so calling it scrub from now on. That's hilarious. :D

And those direction aren't so bad. I mean, it's a pamphlet. A leaflet, even. They're not going to print out all of HBT and put it in the box. That'd be a heavy box.
 
I am brewing my 2nd and 3rd batch of beer right now. My Noob to Noob advice - Patience is your friend when brewing, when in doubt wait another week. I wanted to get a very clear beer and racked my 1st batch twice (my noob mistake among many) but I found that the beer tasted nothing like the finished product I have now and it changed between both rackings and bottling, for the better.
 
FlyFisherman said:
OK you guys calmed me down now,I'm obviously not a patient guy but I've got to leave it alone and we'll see what happens.
Click to expand...

What you need to do is get into vegetable gardening. You plant seeds from some unknown variety of vegetable and wait months to find out if you like it or not. Beer is so much faster.

have you ever sampled a green tomato or green apple? Are you ready to throw out the tomato plants and the apple trees because they tasted sour? Same with beer, it takes a bit of time to develop.:ban:
 
Just to put this into perspective .. 2 weeks is a rush. Generally with my "house beers" I wait about 3 weeks for the primary and then do whatever comes next (don't want to start a secondary or not argument). Watching your beer will let you know when it's ready. Instructions are generalities and you need to listen to what your beer is telling you.

Also, if you have room for it somewhere, cold-crashing the beer is an excellent way to accelerate clearing. I use polyclar or gelatin, I have just re-discovered gelatin though and I'll probably just use it exclusively from now on. Gelatin will work fine at room temp but gelatin + a fridge makes clearing unbelievably quick and easy. Doing this is NOT needed but you sound impatient and that will speed things up. :)

Now then ... sour is not a taste I normally associate with a normal green beer but we all have different ways to describe things. You have nothing to lose by waiting though so give it some time.
 
I think it could be the sharp,non-destinct flavor of green beer you're describing as sour. It is pretty easy to think of that flavor as sour. so it's likely fine at this point.
And never rack beer to anything before FG is reached. Leaving it in primary at least till FG ensures that it won't stall out before fermenting fully. Under mormal conditions anyway. My All NZ hopped IPA was in primary 3 weeks yesterday,but was a point or two higher than BS2 gave for FG. not to mention,a bit cloudy yet. This,for instance,tells me it isn't quite done yet,so I'll give it till Wednesday & check it again. You have to learn what the beer is telling you buy it's current state. This example says "I'm not quite done yet,I need a lil more time to finish" to me.
This is the kind of thing we all have to learn from experience,besides just discussing it here. Which does give a somewhat more common frame of reference. But experience is still the best teacher.
Brewer's Best kits are ok in my opinion. But applying your own process to them will bring better results. I think most instruction sheets are a bit contrived & slow to keep up with us out in the field.
 
unionrdr said:
I think it could be the sharp,non-destinct flavor of green beer you're describing as sour. It is pretty easy to think of that flavor as sour. so it's likely fine at this point.
Click to expand...

My thought as well.

It's actually probably NOT infected. Most infections are incredibly obvious - snot-like strands in the beer, white flaky stuff on top, or the super obvious presence of mold. Nothing the OP described screams infection to me. It just sounds like it isn't done fermenting and conditioning yet.
 
Also, pick up John Palmers "How to Brew" Or get it online.

Mine is so dog eared and worn down. Its pretty much mandatory to own as a home brewer and has everything you need to know.
 
It can take between 2 to 3 weeks in the fermenter. Leave the lid on and leave it alone! Make sure you use priming sugar not table sugar when you bottle carbonate. Wait another 2 to 3 weeks at room temperature for the beer fairy to do it's thing. You will be surprised how good your first batch can turn out.
 
Someone told me that the kits like Brewers Best actually include too much priming sugar and if you use all that is included it over carbonates
 
FlyFisherman said:
Someone told me that the kits like Brewers Best actually include too much priming sugar and if you use all that is included it over carbonates
Click to expand...

Good advice. Lots of places, to save time, throw a standard premeasured amount into kits regardless of how much the style/recipe calls for. Always find out how much sugar you need by weight, and measure with a scale.

-Rich
 
I've used a bunch of brewers best kits and never produced an overcarbed beer. despite pretty good instructions, I made lots of mistakes too on my first batch.
 
Isn't there some sort of an altitude adjustment to be made for priming sugar? My LHBS makes free sugar bags for kits brewed in Calgary. That being said... they give all of the bags out of a big bin that they give away with various styles of beer kits..
 
Not only is it possible to over-carbonate the beer, but you can have a disaster on your hands if you're not careful with how much sugar you use to carb. Even though I was totally aware that I needed to be careful, I still f*&$ed up my first two batches because I wasn't careful enough. It's probably the single most step that is very hard or downright impossible to recover from if you put in way too much. sugar.
 
The 5 oz packs of priming sugar you get with brewers best and other kits will give you 2.7 volumes in 5 gallons @ 70f. That is not enough to worry about bottle bombs and will be considered under carbed for some styles.
Use a priming calculator and save any left over sugar for that belgian you would like to carb to style.
 
I'm sure you guys get sick of responding to questions like this but....Come monday morning the batch of beer that I started this thread about will be in bottles for 2 weeks, I decided to chill one and try it today and it is still completely flat.Shouldn't it have at least a little fizz by now ? Shoiuld I be worried?
 
Nah,just let'em sit for 3 to 4 weeks. Make sure the temp is 70F or a little better. Colder can take longer if they carbonate at all. I've had that problem in winter.
 
FlyFisherman said:
Yes I'm upset for now but I'll get over it in time. I've been lurking on this forum for a while and have read a lot of similar posts.

it's just that this can be a very time consuming process for us newbies and to think that our efforts could be for naught is a little frustrating.

I'd have to say I have at least 6 hours invested in it so far(2 hours cleaning the stove after boil over)

Who knows,maybe I'm getting upset over nothing
Click to expand...
It takes me at least 6 hours just to brew a batch. Relax...
 
Jayslay said:
Isn't there some sort of an altitude adjustment to be made for priming sugar? My LHBS makes free sugar bags for kits brewed in Calgary. That being said... they give all of the bags out of a big bin that they give away with various styles of beer kits..
Click to expand...

I was intrigued by this question so decided to look up the answer, even though I live pretty much at sea level.

The answer is that yes, it does and can, but the impact is relatively small. I also suspect that one that only needs to be worried about if the altitude at which one bottles is significantly different from the altitude at which one drinks.

I am not a scientist and know only what I read and remember from science classes that were a long, long time ago, but...

The residual CO2 left in the beer after fermentation will be less at a higher altitude. The way my non-scientist mind wraps around this concept is that there is less pressure in the ambient air 'pushing' the CO2 the yeast produce into the beer. However: there is also less atmospheric pressure 'pushing' or keeping the CO2 in a fully conditioned and carbonated brew as well once opened. This leads me to believe that if something is bottled and opened at the same atmospheric pressure, there won't be much of an impact.

The difference would come in, for example, if I bottle at sea level, and then open my brew after my climb to the top of Mt. Everest. Can you say probable gusher?

Of course, if I bottle atop Everest and open that beer at home, it'd be pretty flat.

Either way, the impact is generally pretty minimal for most elevelations we homebrewers brew our beer.

There's also more information here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/does-altitude-effect-required-priming-sugar-233937/

That's my understanding at any rate, but again, I don't profess to be particularly knowledgeable here.

Cheers!
 
I know you're already way past this but I just discovered this thread and wanted to share my first brewing experience. I decided to try all-grain right from the start. Why? Because I'm a masochist, I guess. The recipe was a random one I found on some other website that no one else had even rated or commented on. What's the worst that could happen?

I immediately ran into a problem with trying to regulate mash temperature on an electric stove. Then, I boiled too vigorously in a pot WAY too large for the smaller batch I was making and boiled off 50% or more of my volume. While trying to cool the wort in an ice bath, I accidentally splashed some of the water from my filthy sink into the kettle. Then, I transferred to a carboy and topped up with water but had a brainfart and threw in the dry hops immediately when I pitched the yeast. Whatever. A few hours later, there was vigorous fermentation happening and I was satisfied.

I woke up the next morning and it was dead. I could see no further activity at all and the airlock stopped bubbling. I let it go for two weeks but never again saw any signs of further fermentation. I decided to bottle it and got a taste of it in the process. It simply tasted like water with some hops bitterness in it. I laughed. I had my girlfriend taste some. She paused, said "welp..." and then we both laughed. I tried a bottle after a couple of weeks. It was so bad that I poured it down the drain after a few sips.

Fast forward to this last weekend when her and I were bottling my third batch (an absolutely FANTASTIC tasting IPA based on the Fresh Squeezed IPA recipe floating around) and we decided to try another bottle of it since it has had time to sit. We finished the bottle. Somehow, it wasn't as bad. We still laughed because it was wayyyy off from what you'd want an IPA to be and kind of just tastes like a bottle of soap but, whatever, it's beer. Total failure was an acceptable outcome and I think we've had more enjoyment from laughing at it than we would have from drinking it had it turned out right.

Pretty much all I'm saying is that I've found this hobby to be pretty fun as long as I don't take it very seriously. (for instance, my fourth batch was literally a bunch of left-over ingredients I threw together just to use them up. I ended up with an insane OG 1.108 wort, pitched in Wyeast 1762 belgian abbey II yeast because why not, and then threw in some bourbon soaked oak cubes just to make it extra crazy. I didn't notice the temp got to 78 the first day and now the thing smells like a giant batch of overly-ripe bananas from the 1762. I don't even care though because whatever comes out is estimated to be around 11.7%abv and will be downright hilarious.)
 
Holy $h&* did this batch come out good !!! Patience Patience Patience is defintiely the key. I am so P!$$@d that I wasted at least a half case doing tests.

It's my first batch , it took at least 3 weeks longer than expected. Carbonation was definitely the toughest period for me, the instructions said it would carbonate in 2 weeks but it took almost 4. I tested 1 beer almost every day since day 14 and it was flat up until today (day 24). today it is carbonated beyond my expectations and I think that it may have helped that i went back through and shook every bottle a couple days ago because it seemed as though the process had stalled.

I'm a proud pappa of a very good 1.5 cases of beer.
 
Dear GOD that OP was funny!!! Welcome to the obsession!!!!!!!And yes, if they left those typos in there, then those instructions SUCK!!!!!!

I sure hope you got the heavy scrub out though....otherwise that beer will taste like ****.
 
JRapp said:
Also, pick up John Palmers "How to Brew" Or get it online.
Click to expand...

+1 on the book recommendation. How To Brew is an excellent book, especially for novices, giving a great deal of detail with easy to understand explanations for all of it. The online version of the 1st edition is good, but the printed 3rd edition is significantly better. It has supplanted Dave Miller's Home Brewing Guide as my recommended beginner's book, simply because the explanations are such much clearer (Miller gives more detail, but tends to get bogged down in places).

You might want to take a look at The Complete Joy of Homebrewing as well, if only because it is such a fun book and Papazian's contagious enthusiasm often helps carry you through the long, fretful waiting times.

As for terminology, you might want to read this post, which goes over a lot of the terms and processes in brewing.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
FlyFisherman said:
Holy $h&* did this batch come out good !!! Patience Patience Patience is defintiely the key. I am so P!$$@d that I wasted at least a half case doing tests.

It's my first batch , it took at least 3 weeks longer than expected. Carbonation was definitely the toughest period for me, the instructions said it would carbonate in 2 weeks but it took almost 4. I tested 1 beer almost every day since day 14 and it was flat up until today (day 24). today it is carbonated beyond my expectations and I think that it may have helped that i went back through and shook every bottle a couple days ago because it seemed as though the process had stalled.

I'm a proud pappa of a very good 1.5 cases of beer.
Click to expand...

Congrats on your first beer, on your next brew remember that 3 weeks at 70 deg is a minimum amount of time for a beer to carb up, also something that is often over looked is that when you finally chill a bottle, it needs to be chilled for 3 days to allow the c02 to get into solution.

Just an FYI, this is for most of my beers, 5 to 6 hr brew day, 2 weeks in primary, then I age/condition brew for 2 months or longer, then keg carbing for another 10 to 14 days or longer.

When I do bottle, I leave bottles to age/condition/carb for at least 1 1/2 months before trying one, most 2 to 3 months.

So as you can see, its around 3 months turn around time from start to finnish for most of my beers.

Brewing is not a fast process by any means, I have found that waiting a few extra months usually produces a much much better beer, their are exceptions to this of corse, such as wheat beers.

Patiences and fermentation temps are two of the biggies in brewing my friend.

Hope this helps

Welcome to brewing, and Cheers :mug:
 
I just came across this thread tonight. By strange coincidence, I was watching TV and pouring myself a pint from a bomber of Brewer's Best Double IPA. This is the first beer I've brewed in a long time. I'm not exactly a newbie--I did some brewing in the nineties but gave it up for a while. I had been thinking about getting back into it and my LHBS happened to have a sale on Brewer's Best Double IPA kits, so I bought one and took it home. My gear was sitting in the garage--I bought a new bucket for primary and got to work.

The directions weren't as complete as they could have been, but they weren't bad. I ended up getting everything safely into the bucket. A lot of reading here made me think that I would just keep it in primary and forget about secondary. About a week before I planned to bottle it, I dry hopped it with an ounce of Centennial. Just popped the top on the bucket and emptied it in.

Anyway, after about a month in primary, I bottled it. I was happy find out that I hit my FG of 1.015 and I got it all bottled without making a terrible mess. I let it condition for three weeks and cracked a bottle to check it out. Nicely carbonated, good color, great taste. A couple more weeks have gone by and it's developed into a respectable double IPA. It isn't as in-your-face as a lot of West Coast brews, but it isn't a wimpy, fakey clone either. This is a beer that I'd be happy to pour for my buddies (and will, later this week).

One of the things that I've liked about brewing in 2013 is the use of plastic buckets for primary. When I was brewing in the 90s, I always used glass carboys. You could see everything--and worry about everything.The nice thing about the plastic bucket is that I can't see what was going on inside. I just chilled out and assumed that what should have been happening was happening. After a month, when I decided to bottle it, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it wasn't filled with some terrible blob of festering botulism and it was ready to go. I guess it never hurts to be reminded of that. Plan carefully, do everything the best that you can, but relax and enjoy the process. That's what makes brewing fun.

Now that I've got a little of my confidence back, I have an all grain oatmeal stout in primary, and I'm getting organized to brew an English mild this week. I guess I just wanted to check in and tell FlyFisherman that I totally sympathize with what he was going through. Just relax and hope for the best. It looks like it turned out OK in the end, so that's a plus. But even if it is totally undrinkable, you learn a lot. The next batch will be even better. Hang in there!
 

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