Today....Today I Made Beer.

Deacon1856 · 09-19-2008, 10:07 PM

Actually, to be more precise, I am still TECHNICALLY making beer. It's cooling to pitching temp as we speak. More on that in a minute.

Let me first say that this was one of the most fun and rewarding experiences I've undertaken in recent years. I mean, for the love of..., come on, I MADE BEER!

To most on this board that is a small thing, but everyone remembers their first as I will remember mine.

Everything for the most part went off without a hitch. Hit my mash temps. Got the right amount of wort for the boil. Boiled down to the right final amount in the time allotted. Everything went GREAT. And then there was the cooling phase...

Without a doubt the most frustrating part of the whole process. I WILL be making adjustments for my next batch. Even with a wort chiller this is taking forever. Not to mention all the water that is run through that thing...I think I may have drowned all the plants in front of my house!

The only hiccup I had in the whole process was in the cooling stage. When I turned on my water to start through the chiller I turned it up a little high and the clamps holding the tubes to the chiller were not tight enough apparently, so water was spraying out. However much could have gotten in the batch in the time it takes me to walk 20 feet is how much hose-water is in my wort. I fixed that problem and started the cooling process.

40 gallons of water dumped on my plants later I've put it in my outdoor fridge. At last check it's at 77. It's almost time to take a reading and pitch that yeast. I'm really interested to see how close to my intended SG I got. I don't think I took enough data down to get my efficiency, but I hit all my other numbers so far, so I feel pretty good about that.

Let me just say this...Hops, even in pellet form, smell like sunshine and butterflies and kittens and puppies and dancing and babies and sugar and spice and EVERYTHING nice. I had no idea. I wonder if it would be a problem if I put them in a little pouch and wore them around my neck. Wonderful.

Soooo....I will be going out to check on the progress in a moment. I'm really looking forward to the gravity reading. Hopefully it's close.

I want to do what every other n00b on the site does after their first brew and say thanks to everyone. This is something I can DEFINITELY see myself doing often. I might even have to build another "son of fermentation chiller". That thing is the cat's ass by the way.

More updates to follow. Just for reference I made EdWort's Pale Ale...just like everyone else. I figure there's got to be something to it if everyone does it, right?!

Deacon

PS - Went to the Ryder Cup yesterday...brewing is much better than the Ryder Cup. At this point anyway. Phil's got bigger boobs, but he don't smell as good! (excuse the KY coming out in me...) - D

**Brooklyn-Brewtality** · 09-19-2008, 10:08 PM

Congratulations!

But remember one thing, Yeast make the beer, you just cooked it lunch

Deacon1856 · 09-19-2008, 10:16 PM

Good point. Very good point.

I just tasted their lunch...it is gooooood. I couldn't stand it so I went and took a hydro reading. At 76.5* the reading was 1.046, which is 1.048 adjusted. I was shooting for 1.050...so I feel like that's pretty close for a first try. I'm happy as a pig in beer.

FatDuc · 09-19-2008, 11:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deacon1856

...

To most on this board that is a small thing,...

Making beer is not a small thing. It's the ONLY thing.

Congrats, and I still consider it a bit like alchemy when I make this liquid gold.

OK, OK, so that's a bit over the top, but I'm drinking a nice glass of my own wine, and checking out a gorgeous apple cider in a 5 gallon carboy, and all I'm really hoping for right now is that the next weekend or two will be cool enough for me to enjoy cooking up some wort and pitching some yeast.

Willie3 · 09-19-2008, 11:12 PM

Wiat till you become an airlock sniffer. My 4 year old sniffs it with me and thinks its the bomb! Oh, by the way, he makes his own beer in the bathtub, with soap and shampoo and sponges. It is quite bubbly. He thinks he makes the best beer!

Yup! A future Michael Jackson on our hands!!

Cheers!

- WW

Bob · 09-19-2008, 11:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deacon1856

Let me just say this...Hops, even in pellet form, smell like sunshine and butterflies and kittens and puppies and dancing and babies and sugar and spice and EVERYTHING nice. I had no idea. I wonder if it would be a problem if I put them in a little pouch and wore them around my neck. Wonderful.

I must say, this paragraph made both of us - me and SWMBO - smile widely. I laughed a little.

SWMBO said you should wear those hops in a little bag. It'll keep witches away.

Or was that vampires?

Anyway, great job! Now go brew more!

Then send me some.

Bob

WBC · 09-20-2008, 01:31 AM

Now then, which yeast did you use and are you going to keep the ferment temperature in the yeasts recommended range? I'm trying to remind you how important this is.

Deacon1856 · 09-20-2008, 02:09 AM

I used Safale 05 because they were out of the Nottingham. After reading some of the threads here they said that one would be a good substitute.

As for the ferment temperatures, my "son of fermentation chiller" is the alpha snap. My BetterBottle is currently sitting at 63.2* and will fluctuate between there and 68 or so during the day. Sooo temperature control is under control.

I would never poopoo the importance of proper fermentation temperatures!!

Flic · 09-20-2008, 03:08 PM

I had a similar issue last weekend on my first AG getting the temp down. The wort chiller works great to get the temp down to about 100 in 20 minutes. From there, it was tough but I finally removed a couple shelves in my fridge and stuck the fermenter in there for about 2 hours. Got it down under 80 and finally pitched. With extracts, I had always added 2-3 gallons of cold water once in the fermenter so it was ready for yeast immediately......

Deacon1856 · 09-20-2008, 07:20 PM

That's exactly what I had to do. Into the fridge for an hour or so. I'm working on getting a big tub and a submersible pump to fix this...