My first brew. WIll it be ok?

[DonMoleon]

I made first ever batch of beer yesterday, it was an oatmeal stout. As with most people's first experience (presumably), not everything went according to plan. I'm a bit concerned that some of the things that went wrong may have ruined the beer before it even had a chance, but maybe not. Here are the things that I am concerned about:

1. I realized after the steeping process (I didn't do a partial mash as I used quick oats) that my thermometer was not working properly. The recipe said to keep the liquid around 150F, but I think it was 5 or 10 degrees higher or lower.

2. I brewed outdoors and it was fairly windy. I think this made the gas burner take a long time to heat up the brewing pot to a rolling boil, and I ended up adding the LME, dark malt, and maltodextrin before it was hot enough to boil. After about 10 minutes, just before it began to finally boil, I added the hops pellets.

3. The gas burner I used is a portable one that is typically used for camping and so forth. They take small propane canisters, and I only had a couple (I didn't anticipate it to take so long to boil). I ended up running out of gas after boiling the wort for about 45 minutes, although the recipe called for a 60 minute boil.

4. When I chilled the wort I used a big bucket of ice. Like the propane, I ran out of ice before the wort chilled to 70F as the recipe called for. It took about 15 minutes to chill the wort to around 85F (or at least I think, since my thermometer isn't accurate).

5. I took an original gravity measurement of what I believe was 1.063, but because I didn't know the exact wort temperature it may have been as high as 1.065 (the recipe said to make it between 1.056 - 1.064)

6. After siphoning the wort to the fermenting bucket, I mixed in the yeast. The temperature was still around 80F most likely. After sealing the fermenter I moved it to a cool room immediately and it has been in there ever since, around 70F, but possibly as high as 74F during the daytime (the recipe says to keep it 68-72F, which is impossible where I live unless I keep the A/C blowing directly on it 24 hours a day).

How bad were each of these issues?

Collectively speaking, does my oatmeal stout stand a chance of coming out decent?

As always, thanks for your help guys...

[Bugeater]

1. Even with the quick oats you still need to do a partial mash to convert the starches to sugar. By just steeping you merely dissolved the soluble starches into your wort. This may contribute some cloudiness and perhaps minor stability problems if you store any of this beer more than a couple of months. In a stout, you won't notice the cloudiness. This probably won't bother your beer to a noticeable degree since, as a first brew, you will be drinking it quickly. The temperature here won't create any issues. In fact, if you had any non-kilned malted grains mixed with the oatmeal, everything I said above probably doesn't apply since the starches may have been converted anyway.

2. None of this is a problem.

3. Again, not much of a problem since this is basically an extract brew. The only issues are that the gravity will be slightly low due to less water being evaporated and the bitterness will be a bit low due to the shorter boil.

4. 15 minutes to get to 85°F is pretty good, but you really need to get it closer to 68-70°.

5. No real problem. You really do need to get a good thermometer so you can make a proper temperature adjustment to get an accurate gravity.

6. This is probably the only part that is really a concern. 80° is definitely too high to pitch most yeast. On top of that, fermentation is exothermic (generates it own heat) which can raise the temperature of the wort up to 5-10° (sometimes more) higher than the ambient temperature. As a result, your fermentation temperature probably spiked at 80-85° a couple hours after pitching yeast. Fermentation temp probably settled down after 24-36 hours in the 75-80° range. Fermentation this high will usually create fusel alcohols which will cause a solvent or "hot alcohol" taste in the finished beer. You need to remember that the fermentation temperature shown in recipes refer to temperature of the wort, not the ambient temperature in the room. Since your room temperature is not all that much higher than the recommended fermentation temp, you can control it by putting your fermenter in a tub of water and then draping the the fermenter in an old t-shirt so that it will wick up the water and cool the fermenter through evaporation. Having a small fan blowing on this will drop the temperature a few more degrees.

All in all, lots of folks have made worse mistakes than this (including me) and still come out with a decent drinkable beer. You won't have an award winning beer, but you should have an enjoyable one to drink. Get yourself a good thermometer (and check the calibration) and get the fermentation temp under control as I suggested and your next beer should be outstanding. Now get to work and get the next beer started so it will be too late to quit in case this first batch doesn't come out all that great and so you don't run out before the next batch is ready.

Good luck!

Wayne

[DonMoleon]

6. This is probably the only part that is really a concern. 80° is definitely too high to pitch most yeast. On top of that, fermentation is exothermic (generates it own heat) which can raise the temperature of the wort up to 5-10° (sometimes more) higher than the ambient temperature. As a result, your fermentation temperature probably spiked at 80-85° a couple hours after pitching yeast. Fermentation temp probably settled down after 24-36 hours in the 75-80° range. Fermentation this high will usually create fusel alcohols which will cause a solvent or "hot alcohol" taste in the finished beer.

The thermometer I use to measure the temperature of the fermentor is one of those sticker thermometers that you typically see stuck on the side of a fish tank (it is placed horizontally on the middle of the bucket, facing away from the A/C that is blowing onto the bucket). Once I added the yeast and sealed the fermentor I put it in the guest bedroom and turned on the A/C, then I left my house for the night and returned 24 hours later. The thermometer on the bucket said it was about 73F. When I woke up this morning it was about 69F (this was approx. 36 hours later).

Considering that the temperature seemed to get into the low 70's fairly quickly (within the first day of fermenting), do you think this lowered the chances of creating the fusel alcohols that you mentioned?

[BDawg]

Will it reduce the fusels? No, but no more will be produced.

In addition to the fusels, early warm pitching leads to a lot of fruity esters in the finished product. The shortened boil will also produce lower bitterness which will add to the perceived fruity sweetness.

I suggest you wet a t-shirt and drape it over your bucket. Keep it wet and the evaporation will help cool the fermenter, lowering the fusels and ester production. Hopefully, the yeast will post-process them.

HTH-

[DonMoleon]

When I get home from work I'll be sure to put the fermentor in a bucket of water and wick a wet t-shirt as suggested. Thanks.

[DonMoleon]

In addition to the fusels, early warm pitching leads to a lot of fruity esters in the finished product. The shortened boil will also produce lower bitterness which will add to the perceived fruity sweetness.

When you say "fruity" is this necessarily a bad thing? I actually tend to like fruit flavored ales and stouts. In fact, before I brewed this batch I started a thread about possibly making it a rasberry oatmeal stout...

[spiderwrangler]

2. Are you boiling the full 5 gallon volume? If so, moving to a partial boil and topping up with cool water would allow you to get to a boil faster and make cooling easier. Generally want to turn off the gas when adding LME, etc and stir it in good to keep it from scorching on the bottom.

1. Even with the quick oats you still need to do a partial mash to convert the starches to sugar. By just steeping you merely dissolved the soluble starches into your wort.

It's still beer!

[DonMoleon]

2. Are you boiling the full 5 gallon volume? If so, moving to a partial boil and topping up with cool water would allow you to get to a boil faster and make cooling easier. Generally want to turn off the gas when adding LME, etc and stir it in good to keep it from scorching on the bottom.

I actually did a partial boil rather than the full 5 gallons. Either way I will probably have to get a better burner soon.

Also, I put the wet t-shirt and bucket o' water technique to use,and this seems to have cooled down the outside bucket temperature 2-4 degrees, and presumably the inside temperature as well.

Any thoughts on the "fruity problem" that may arise from the high temperature yeast pitch? Is this a bad fruit taste, or one that I may actually like, given that I like fruit flavors in my beer?