The recipe was the Best Bitter in DaaB's mini mash tutorial and I used Gervin English ale yeast. It's been fermenting for a week at 20C and this is the first time I've checked the SG. My OG was 1.044 so something is clearly wrong. Either the wort contained too much fermentable sugar (poor mashing), or something is eating the non-fermentable sugar (infection).
I've just tasted a small sample and there are no off flavours. I was going to bottle it one week from now, if it still tastes wholesome then and the SG has remained at 1.004 can I assume there is no infection? Is this enough time for an infection to become detectable by taste?
Also, would it be possible to get a wort this fermentable by mashing at too low a temperature? My initial mash temperature was 64C which I managed to increase to 65C within ~10 minutes and which steadily rose to 67C by end of mash.
FG = 1.004?
mitch, I may be reading this wrongly, but a OG (before you pitch the yeast) of 1044 and a FG of 1004 seems fine to me,
with a FG 1004 it will probably be a little dry but it's a healthy 5.2% ABV.
I thought, surely poor mashing would not give enough fermentables, I've never heard of anyone complaining about getting too many fermentables. The idea is to get as much sweet wort as you can when you are fly/batch sparging before you get below 1006 and start to extract tanins.
with a FG 1004 it will probably be a little dry but it's a healthy 5.2% ABV.
I thought, surely poor mashing would not give enough fermentables, I've never heard of anyone complaining about getting too many fermentables. The idea is to get as much sweet wort as you can when you are fly/batch sparging before you get below 1006 and start to extract tanins.
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PieOPah
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Orfy
Mashing at lower temperature will give more fermentables.
Budweiser mash at high temps and get thin beers. The only problem is the thinner the beer the less taste and body. Taste it and see if it's got enough taste and body. If not, two options.
Let the wife drink it or use it to blend with an heavy beer.
I tried a Lebanese pilsner last night. On the bottle it had a OG of 1038 which is reasonable but it had a ABV of 4.1, also reasonable. The problem is to achieve that you have to let it go to 1006 plus, plus they used maize.
I'm sorry to say it had less taste and body than piss water. It was a shadow of anything I brew and not worth drinking.
Budweiser mash at high temps and get thin beers. The only problem is the thinner the beer the less taste and body. Taste it and see if it's got enough taste and body. If not, two options.
Let the wife drink it or use it to blend with an heavy beer.
I tried a Lebanese pilsner last night. On the bottle it had a OG of 1038 which is reasonable but it had a ABV of 4.1, also reasonable. The problem is to achieve that you have to let it go to 1006 plus, plus they used maize.
I'm sorry to say it had less taste and body than piss water. It was a shadow of anything I brew and not worth drinking.
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mitch
Sorry about the confusion. By 'poor mashing' I was referring to the fact that I missed my target initial mash temperature, and then allowed the temperature to creep up during mashing.Garth wrote:I thought, surely poor mashing would not give enough fermentables
I thought, as a rule of thumb, for a balanced beer you need around 25% of the wort sugars to be unfermentable. The beer Orfy described as having "less taste and body than piss water" contained around 16% unfermentables. It looks like mine contained at most 9%.I've never heard of anyone complaining about getting too many fermentables.
My mash schedule was something like this:Orfy wrote:Mashing at lower temperature will give more fermentables.
0-10 mins 64C
10-30 mins 65C
30-90 mins 66C
Is my balance of sugars consistent with this?
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Orfy
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bitter_dave
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Hi Mitch, I've made beers (bitters) which have come out at 1006 and been excellent - yours may be as well.
Also, if you've never done this before, it's worth checking whether your hydrometer is correct by putting it in water at 20 C and making sure the water line comes up to zero. Hydrometers can be pretty unreliable and this may be contributing to the level of the gravity reading.
Also, if you've never done this before, it's worth checking whether your hydrometer is correct by putting it in water at 20 C and making sure the water line comes up to zero. Hydrometers can be pretty unreliable and this may be contributing to the level of the gravity reading.
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mitch