I just bottled my first extract, partial grain DIPA brew. OG 1.086 FG 1.018 Fermtemp 66 degrees. When I carefully racked my beer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket, I only had 4 gallons of beer. I started fermentation 3 weeks ago with 5 gallons. I used a bucket for my primary fermenter, and didn’t use a secondary. I would periodically check for a good seal, and always had one. Any suggestions on where to find my missing gallon of beer?
How much trub did you have in the bottom of the fermenter? Did you dry hop that DIPA?
I didn’t dry hop, and I had about an inch of trub.
Did you pull samples?
I didn’t pull any samples. The other weird thing was that while my beer was in the fermenter it smelled like beer, and after racking it to the bottling bucket it didn’t smell like beer or hoppy. The empty fermenter bucket smelled great, hoppy.
IIPA usually = beer loss to absorption by the large hop load. How much hops did you use? Close to 1/2 gallon-ish total loss isn’t uncommon for me in IIPA. As for the loss of hop aroma, you’ll likely notice it be more apparent once the beer carbs and the CO2 helps lift the aromas up into the glass. If not, keep in mind that hop aromas easily oxidize and that it’s good practice to minimize oxygen pickup where you can. Be sure to post how it comes out.
Edit - If your sugar was based on 5 gallons and you ended up with 4, you’ll likely get overcarbed beer. Be careful - as soon as the beer seems carbed properly, get the bottles right in the fridge and keep them there. Bottle bombs are not a good thing.
Thanks for the help. I’m hoping I didn’t over carbonate my bottles, since my priming sugar calculations were based off 5 gallons and not the 4 gallons I ended up with. As for how the beer conditions in the bottle, I’ll know in 3 to 4 weeks.
Wish I had a dollar for every time I asked this question 
Besides opening a bottle or waiting until it explodes, how else can you tell if your bottles are over carbonated?
In this case, I’d check a bottle after a week at warm temps, and then every 2-3 days until the beer has the right carb level to you, then refrigerate all the bottles and keep them there. It’ll slow the yeast activity greatly , especially being an ale strain, and prevent your bottles from overcarbing in the short term. They might well slowly carb further in the fridge a bit more, but hoppy beers usually get consumed pretty quickly. Do this and you’ll be fine.
Thanks for the advice, I don’t mind losing a few bottles to over carbonation, it’s my wives reaction to exploding beer bottles that’s the concern. :-\
Well wait, over carbing a DIPA vs over carbing a hefe, the vols are probably 2.2ish vs 3+ I would not say 4 gallons of carbing sugar say 5 oz is a bottle bomb. I will say that it is over carbonated to style, but I like my DIPAs to be very low carbonation. My guess is you’re fine, and that’s per the norm. What was your bottling amount ~ 2 cases?
Yeah, I’m not saying automatic bottle bombs. It very likely will be just overcarbed for an IPA. Nonetheless, sampling until the carb level is where he likes and then getting the bottles cold can give him a beer he likes better if it’s consumed in a timely fashion and MAYBE prevent a few bombs. All it takes is a couple bottles with micro cracks and overpriming.
I get ya.
I ended up with 42 bottles, a six pack shy of 2 cases. I used 4.5 oz of priming sugar.
Is your fermentor accurately marked for the five gallon level? You can always bump up your volume in the fermentor with DME to cover the expected volume loss to trub.
My LHBS builds his kits to target 5.25 gallons into the fermentor to account for some trub loss. I think this is great at helping new (extract) brewers get the volume they are looking for without getting discouraged. I’ve also had other kits for some reason come up short on the total volume when topping off to hit OG and not thinking I used all the priming sugar in the kit. They came out just fine, but I cool a try one bottle after 2 weeks and go from there and then put the rest of the bottles into the fridge when the carbonation level is where I like it.
It’s been almost 4 weeks since I bottled my DIPA. I’ve tried a bottle every weeks since I bottled, and the taste hasn’t gotten better. It’s very malty and no hop flavor or aroma. As I said in my previous post, the fermenter smelled great, very hoppy, it’s taken these past 3 plus weeks to get that smell out of it. However, none of these aromas or flavors ended up in the beer. The recipe called for 4.5 oz of corn sugar and I’m beginning to think that was the problem. This may have raised the starting gravity so high that the hops couldn’t utilize properly and ended up stuck in the fermenter, and not my beer. There’s a weird aftertaste that I can’t place. My teeth feel like they are being cleaned with every sip. Wondering if this is caused by fusel alcohol?
I haven’t tried this yet but one he gets to the level he is happy at carb wise cant he just pop all the bottles and recap? Or will it continue to carbonate?
When did you add the sugar? The boil?