After a greatly-successful period brewing from kits, I read a book by Charie Papazian which gave me the confidence to try without the kit. So I headed down to a local brewery and got hold of hops, speciality grains, and a starter yeast, and got somemalt extract.
After 3 hours of careful measuring, boiling, straining, I finally had a wort in the barrel with the yeast.
Soon, I noticed a heavy sediment in the bottom of the barrel, which makes me think my straining let a lot of stuff through, and made me worry the yeast sedimentation will result in a deposit level at the bottom of the barrel which will be higher than the tap level.
The next day, everything was bubbling normally, but the smell in the brew cupboard was very different to normal.
The next day it hit me... I forgot to adjust the quantity of hops in the brew to account for the strength of my hops (I used super-alpha in the same quantity as the fuggles in the recipe). This means that effectively I have double-hopped my wort, and I have no idea what to do now.
Suggestions so far are:
1.Leave it and carry on, hope for the best
2. Add sugar!
3. Go through a process to take what's in one barrel as the basis for 2, by doubling the volume and just adding more malt.
My ingredients/process was:
1/2 lB crystal malt
1/4 Black malt
1/4 Caramalt
All slowly brought to boil, grains removed just prior to boiling (took about an hour)
Added 3kgs of malt extract
2ozs (instead of 1!) Super alpha hops
Boiled for 45minutes
Added 1/2 Oz D-saaz hops for aroma
Boiled for 5 minutes
Strained into barrel, pitched yeast at 24degrees.
So, what would you do?!
I am hoping not to have to throw it away and start again, but if it's definitely a disaster I don't want to go through all the bottling time for nothing.
Your advice greatly appreciated :)