I'm not sure if I handled this right.

[duskb]

Tonight I was brewing a recipe that called for 6lbs of pale extract and 1 lb of DME. The last 10 minutes in when I was ready to add the yeast nutrient I realized that I forgot to add in the 1lb of DME.

After going over the pro's and con's of throwing in DME for the last 10 minutes of the boil I decided to add about 3/4 of a cup and let the pot boil for another 30 minutes hoping I might get the best of both worlds (some extra sugar versus nothing). I read somewhere that 60 minute boils are for hop extraction and that if the sugar isn't bonded within a certain time frame it screws the chemistry off. Perhaps I misunderstood?

So, what can I expect. How screwed up is this thing?

 

[Seven]

It should be fine just a bit lower gravity than what the recipe intended.

 

[AUEnder]

It will be beer. No worries.

Sent from my iPhone using HB Talk

 

[billtzk]

For a 5 gallon batch, 6 lb of LME plus 1 lb of DME should give you an original gravity of about 1.052. If you leave out all of the DME, you'd have an OG of 1.043. How much does 3/4 cup of your DME weigh? If you know that, you could figure out what the resulting OG should have been.

I'm going to guess that there are 2.75 cups of DME in a pound, on average. I really don't know if that is accurate, but it's ok for an example. That's about .36 pounds per cup. So 3/4 cup would be about .27 pounds. Adding that to your 6 pounds of LME should result in an OG of about 1.045, assuming a volume of 5 gallons.

Knowing what the recipe was supposed to yield and what your actual measured OG was would tell you what you did by omitting most of the pound of DME. So, what was your OG supposed to be? What did it turn out to be when you checked it with your hydrometer before pitching your yeast?

 

[hoghead]

You should of put the whole pound in. There are some people who add DME at flameout without problems. The extra 30 min boil will cause any of your aroma hops (if you added any) to turn more toward bittering hops.

 

[duskb]

For a 5 gallon batch, 6 lb of LME plus 1 lb of DME should give you an original gravity of about 1.052. If you leave out all of the DME, you'd have an OG of 1.043. How much does 3/4 cup of your DME weigh? If you know that, you could figure out what the resulting OG should have been.

I'm going to guess that there are 2.75 cups of DME in a pound, on average. I really don't know if that is accurate, but it's ok for an example. That's about .36 pounds per cup. So 3/4 cup would be about .27 pounds. Adding that to your 6 pounds of LME should result in an OG of about 1.045, assuming a volume of 5 gallons.

Knowing what the recipe was supposed to yield and what your actual measured OG was would tell you what you did by omitting most of the pound of DME. So, what was your OG supposed to be? What did it turn out to be when you checked it with your hydrometer before pitching your yeast?

Someone hand wrote this recipe down for me a few years ago but forgot to include the gravity readings. I have no idea what they are. I've been making it based on the dry weights he provided years ago and topping off to 5 gal based on where I market it on the bucket. So far never had a mistake, until tonight.

I did not know you could add DME at flameout and get away with it. I seemed to recall that the sugar needed time to bond with the hop oils and it would throw things off to not have _exactly_ a 60 minute minimum boil to create that bond.

Since I did not want to affect the hop profile any more than necessary I held off the aroma hops until the 80 min mark.

We'll see how this snafu affects taste. I know this brew pretty well but just spaced when I threw the brew together tonight. One mistake can have significant consequences, hopefully this was not one of them.

 

[MadHopper]

I had faced something similar recently:

During Thanksgiving weekend I was brewing a very hoppy Pale Ale. I usually partial mash, but the OG was low enough on this (1.052) that I decided to go all-grain. Something must have happened during the mashing/sparging and my efficiency was waaay off - the final OG came out to be 1.032 (kicked myself for not checking the gravity or at least tasting the wort at the beginning of the boil)!

So I did what any self-respecting home-brewer will do and came to these forums. Bit of search yielded the fact it would be ok to boil some DME and add to the carboy. Took a pound and half of DME, boiled with the minimum amount of water possible for ~15mins, cooled - added to the carboy. OG came to ~1.048.

A week later FG was 1.008, I kegged and couple of weeks under forced carbonation, the beer tastes superb.

 

[billtzk]

Dusk, you're beer will be fine, but the taste and mouthfeel will be a little different, probably lighter in body, and will have a little less acohol content. But as long as you followed the recipe and process you've been using for years, minus that extra pound of DME, the beer will still be good.

That said, you can learn an awful lot from John Palmer's How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time. That one on Amazon is the 3rd edition published in 2006, and it is the one I recommend you buy. It's only $12, and money well spent.

The first edition of the book, not very much different from the current edition, is available free on the web. Here is the link: How to Brew.

However, I don't recall whether John addresses the reasons for wort boil time in the book. The main reasons wort is boiled for 60 to 90 minutes (the latter especially for all-grain beer) is to stop enzymatic activity, coagulate and drop out undesired proteins, kill bacteria, molds, and wild yeasts, extract and isomerize hop alpha-acids, boil off undesirable compounds like DMS (dimethyl sulfides) and esters, carmelize some of the wort sugars to affect flavor, and reduce the volume and concentration to the target volume and gravity.

Of all of those, the ones most applicable in your particular case are the elimination of DMS and the coagulation of proteins (hot break). Since you only added 3/4 cup of dry extract and then boiled for another 30 minutes, I doubt you'll have much noticeable increase in DMS. It's possible your beer might not clear as well, but it probably won't make much of a difference there either. I've heard of a lot of peopl who only do 30 minute boils.

 

[Homercidal]

The amount of difference an extra lbs of malt would do is not noticeable.

In fact, I would probably have added only half the LME to start with and put all the rest of the extract in with about 10 minutes left.

Your beer is just going to be a little shy of it's intended gravity. No worries there.

 

[billtzk]

A pound of DME is worth 9 gravity points (.009) in a 5 gallon batch. I would notice it. But a beer that originally targeted 1.052 and wound up with 1.043 would still be a good beer, I'm sure. Just not the same beer.