Gerry Nobody
Member
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2020
- Messages
- 24
- Reaction score
- 10
Okay, so I am trying to learn from my mistakes and was wondering if someone can point out to me what I did wrong here.
I guess my first mistake was being too ambitious. This was my first time brewing beer (have done cider and wine pretty satisfactorily for a few years) and I like strong Belgian ales so tried this recipe: Belgian Dark Strong Ale - Westvleteren 12 Clone - Multiple Award Winner
I followed the ingredients more or less to the letter, but the process...less so. I don't have a stirplate so made the starter just by agitating by hand but that looked okay, the problems started when boiling which, it being first time, I found hard to control, lost a huge amount of water during the process. By the time I strained the wort into the fermentation bin around 18 litres has somehow become around 10, so I added some water, about 3 litres if I recall correctly.
OG was 1.051 so a lot lower than the 1.090 in the recipe. I knew the ale was going to be weaker, but FG was 1.034 which left me with an extremely weak 2.23% ABV. Was this purely because I added water? I suppose I thought the wort was more concentrated so water wouldn't make a huge difference.
The thing is the beer tastes fantastic, so still a nice drink, but just wondering how it ended up so weak. Possibly some mistake I made with he starter?
I guess my first mistake was being too ambitious. This was my first time brewing beer (have done cider and wine pretty satisfactorily for a few years) and I like strong Belgian ales so tried this recipe: Belgian Dark Strong Ale - Westvleteren 12 Clone - Multiple Award Winner
I followed the ingredients more or less to the letter, but the process...less so. I don't have a stirplate so made the starter just by agitating by hand but that looked okay, the problems started when boiling which, it being first time, I found hard to control, lost a huge amount of water during the process. By the time I strained the wort into the fermentation bin around 18 litres has somehow become around 10, so I added some water, about 3 litres if I recall correctly.
OG was 1.051 so a lot lower than the 1.090 in the recipe. I knew the ale was going to be weaker, but FG was 1.034 which left me with an extremely weak 2.23% ABV. Was this purely because I added water? I suppose I thought the wort was more concentrated so water wouldn't make a huge difference.
The thing is the beer tastes fantastic, so still a nice drink, but just wondering how it ended up so weak. Possibly some mistake I made with he starter?