Ok, So I have brewed for my 7th time. So far I have only used extracts with some grain in the beginning for flavor. I am making sure I have the basics down before I upgrade to all grain, but anyway onto the problem:
I decided to test my luck at adding mint to stout. My desire was to come up with a warm weather stout where the mint would be present just enough for an aftertaste to effectively act as a palate cleanser. Anyway I made the stout with:
3.3 lbs of LME
about 1/4 lb of roasted barely
3 lbs Dark DME
1 oz of cascade hops (boiled for 45 minutes)
1/2 oz of Willamette hops (boiled 10 minutes)
1 pouch of liqued red ale yeast
after fermenting for 1 week I racked the beer for 2 weeks. Once this passed I bottled with 3/4 cup of corn sugar to carbonate, and added at very end 1/2 oz of mint extract.
So after this was all done I have a beer as carbonated as pepsi, with the same amount of head…what did I do? (no detergents were used in the cleansing of items, I used a cleaner/sanatizer from my local brew shop and I rinsed everything after the soak).
Yeah you should weigh not measure the sugar/extract. 3/4 cup seems like a lot for a stout. Temperature(how warm did the beer get), sugar/extract type and of course hitting your bottling volume all factor in to the carb level.
The only thing I can think about the lack of head retention is that the oil in the mint reduced it, but I don’t think mint extract has that much (if any) oil in it.
Alright, I will try weighing form now on but…most of my stuff has only given me measurements. Should I just then get a scale and go off of a cup is 8 oz so if I need 3/4 a cup weight to 6 oz? Also heat may have been an issue, I came home one day to our air conditioning being off and the whole house being 81 degrees.
i quit weighing. i took 20 measurements of 3/4 cup and put them on the scale and theyh were all within a few grams which is less than 1 percent differnce
A cup of sugar is around 6 oz. (actually 4.5-6.5 probably, depending on size, of granule, humidity etc.)
I would guess that part of the problem is a but too much sugar (overcarbed problem) but the lack of head retention… you say it’s like pepsi? so it pours and foam forms but then immediately falls back leaving no foam? When in the ferment process did it get up into the 80s? if that happened in the first three days or so it could well have caused fuesels to form which can wreak havoc on head retention. There are a range of infections that could account both for the lack of head and the higher than expected carbonation as well.
A couple of things to try next time:
Skip the secondary, not needed, just an additional opportunity for something to get messed up.
skip the dark DME and make up for the color with some more dark malts and some dark crystal in the steeping grains
3)watch that ferm temp, particularly in the early (first 3-4) days of fermentation.
weigh instead of measure the priming sugar
think about using a no-rinse sanitizer. When you rinse sanitary vessels with un-sanitized water you risk undoing your sanitation.
For how you described the lack of head retention, yes perfectly. It appears lasts for like 30 seconds and is gone. As for the secondary fermentation, everyone has told me that its super important to do. Should I really not bother with it? If so, what styles of beer should I secondary ferment with as opposed to which ones I shouldn’t? As for the temperature, my beer got warm during the second week.
Well second week temp spike shouldn’t really matter for feusels. What temp was the wort at when you pitched the yeast?
Is it possible the had retention issue is because your glasses aren’t well rinsed?
On secondary, there is really one reason to do a secondary and that is if you want to save the yeast from primary and also want to add lots of fruit our dry hops. If you are planing to age a beer for a year before bottling that might be a second reason. But the beer it’s fine in primary for better than a month.
Well I am brewing stout again, so do you recommend that I just ditch the secondary this time? Also the temp I pitched at was 64 degrees (62 for my current batch).
Alright, I will give not racking it a try. Right now my O.S.G. is at 1.066 so I am excited to see what it drops to. Sadly I do not have a way to keep it at 64…I do not have the space for a second fridge in my house just yet (its an eventual dream as I would love to try my hands at lager)
well you can put it in a big tub of water and add ice/frozen bottles of water or drape t-shirt or similar over the fermenter and keep the cloth wet for evaporative cooling effects.