Homebrewing 101: Part 3 - 7 Days update
Good morning!
It's been 7 days since I started the last brew and about 4-5 days since it started talking.
Fermentation slowed down and I took a gravity reading yesterday; the starting gravity was 1038-1040 and by yesterday we reached 1008 which is a good rate of conversion of sugar to alcohol. This morning I opened it up again to have a second reading and confirm that fermentation stopped - if you get the same gravity reading in a row it basically means fermentation has stopped or is stuck. I would like it to go a bit lower, but I don't think it will as we're almost at 80% attenuation rate.
The wort is beer by now, it's clearing; it looks and smells like beer.
I had a little taste to see how it's progressing; at this moment it tastes pretty bland, wheaty flavours coming out and it's flat as it hasn't been through a second fermentation. Best way to describe the taste at this early stage is simply beery, heh.
To give it a little kick we add some hops; adding hops after the fermentation has finished is called dryhopping.
This time I chose an American hops I've never tried before. It was recommended to me by the shopkeeper of a homebrew place I went to last week. It's called Cluster and it's a hop variety with a relatively low Alpha Acid content of 5.3% meaning the balance between bitterness and hoppyness will be tipped in the later's favour.
I'm using 100g of dried flowers for my 21 litre batch which should hop it up quite well, I've done batches with 28g and that was enough so this should kick things up a notch.
The hops smell great, I love the fruitiness they give off.
It would be best to use a hopping bag but I don't have one and I'm out of muslin so I'm dropping the hops straight in the fermenting bucket.
Give everything a little stir to mix it up and get the hops wet so some may sink.
If in a couple of days all the hops is still on top which I suspect it will, I will put a layer of muslin on top and push the hops under the liquid line.
That's about it for this stage; we need to give it more time again for the alcohol in the beer to start breaking down the hops and extract all the oils from it. We're going to give 1 to 2 weeks for this process, 72 hours is enough as well, but I prefer longer periods as it allows the yeast to pull more stuff down from the beer clearing it more in the process.
Thanks for following my little beer's journey from sugary concoction to deliciousness!
Are you sure with the readings of the hydrometer, or its accuracy? Because 95% attenuation, that you have seems impossible for me. 80-85% attenuation is possible, but this 95%... Wow!
Found the mistake. It seems I noted down the wrong readings when doing the post. I'm at 1008, almost 80%. I should have maybe waited a bit more, but it might still go a bit lower now even though the hops will slow this down.
Fixed numbers in the post.
Thank you!
That seems to be just right there! I think you cannot expect better performance than 80-82% of attenuation. The yeast have done a pretty good job. What yeast have you used with the beer?
Yes, that makes sense.
I've used the one that came with the kit. The yeast sachet simply says "Weiss Beer Yeast" no other markers. I've tried some other well known wheat beer yeasts but the included one seemed a lot better.
I've just parsed it through a homebrew calculator, and you're right! Something must be wrong somewhere. I'll have a quick look at the pics I've taken; 95% seems excessive.
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Wow, awesome to see the photos! I'd love to get into homebrew. I've brewed kombucha but I'd love to do some elderberry wine and beer from homegrown hops. Thanks again for sharing and just followed ya!
Thank you!
You should get into homebrewing! You've brewed kombucha, you're practically qualified to do some wine and beer.
I'm a bit late this season for the elderflowers, they're already going to seed now; will make both a elderflower champagne and a beer with some flowers in. Never used the berries though.
I'm trying to grow hops, but I only have an ornamental one I picked up a couple of months ago. In the winter I'm going to order some rhisomes for next season,
Awesome! Thanks for the detailed reply. I look forward to your future posts and learning more. I just need to take the plunge and get the supplies and go for it. Where are you getting your hops rhizomes?
Thank you!
Supply wise you need a bucket with a lid, no need to go for anything more complicated than that to start with. That's still what I'm using now.
In the UK I can get rhizomes from several growers; I can order them online. You can get them on ebay as well but you have no guarantee of what you're getting, there's people selling "citra" hops there and that variety is proprietary so it can't be the real thing.
Awesome! I guess once you find a good variety you like, it's very easy to divide up the rhizomes and multiply them. Maybe trying to grow a few different varieties and seeing what does best in our climate would be a good experiment.