I purchased my homebrewing kit from American Home Brewing Supply back in the middle of May. A standard 5 gal. kit with a 6.5 gal glass carboy, along with my first brew kit, the True Brew Porter!
Ingredients:
Unhopped Dark Liquid Extract: (1 can) 3.3 lbs
Dark Dried Extract : 2 lbs
Chocolate Grain Malt: 6 oz
Malto-Dextrin: 4 oz
Cascade Hops (pellet) : 1 oz
Ale Yeast
Priming Sugar: 5 oz
Brought 1.5 gals of water up to a boil, then reduced heat.
Steeped grain in a steeping bag in the hot water for 30 min.
Removed the grains and brought wort back up to a low boil.
While continually stirring, the liquid extract, the dried extract, 4 oz of the Malto-dextrin, and the hops was added to the boiling wort.
Boiled for 30 min.
I cool my wort by sticking the stock pot in the sink and filling the sides with cold water and adding ice. Once it's decently cooled, I added the wort to my carboy with 3-4 gallons of cool water to finish cooling. The yeast was pitched and I placed the carboy in the loft of our wee condo to ferment.
The wort never seemed to cool to a decent temperature for the yeast (ale yeast is generally good between about 65-75° F) upstairs in the loft. So after a few days, I moved it downstairs and it instantly dropped about 5°.
12 days of fermenting later, the priming sugar was added and the beer was bottled.
Original Gravity: 1.038
Final Gravity: 1.021
Which calculates to a whopping ~ 2.9% alcohol [(38-21)*0.14 + 0.50]
I have a feeling that the few days at 75+° might have wiped out the yeast and caused the low conversion. Nonetheless, the beer was good and those who have tried it liked it.
Cheers!
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