First Batch

Brewed my first 5 gallon batch Saturday (London Pub Ale - Fullers ESB). After many years of Mr. Beer and tedious bottling I finally bought myself a corny keg and have graduated to real brewing. Everything went well for the first time, steeping, sparging and boiling the wort, hop addition etc. I think the only rookie mistake was not knowing the time frame for the wort to cool. I used a package liquid yeast and activated it @ 3 pm. Finally pitched the yeast at 73 degrees, about 11:45 pm. There were no signs of fermentation the following morning, so I stirred it up again and started to get a lot of action. The next step is to get the fermentation temp down to 64 degrees from what it is now, 74 degrees. Heard a cooler and some frozen water bottles works well. Hope it all works out. Have not decided on secondary yet, may just wait three weeks and put it in the keg, force carb and enjoy.

Congrats on your first brew and welcome to the forum.

Is 64 not a bit too low to ferment?

B

Depends on the yeast, if you used the wyeast 1968 london esb yeast, I think 64 is at the bottom of the threshold. As long as it gets started and you don't try to keep it at 64, it should raise enough to do the job. Once your yeast is going though, be careful not to let it drop too low, as it will stall and might not get moving again.

Sounds like it will be a good brew either way! Congrats!

The recipe is recommending a fermentation temp of 62-66. I think most of the initial fermentation is complete now but that seems kind of low to me as well.

I ferment almost all of my beers under 65 unless it's a hefeweizen or something else that requires a special temp. It will be fine.

Bubbling away. Have it at 64-68. Can't wait to try it.

WarBac said:

I think the only rookie mistake was not knowing the time frame for the wort to cool. I used a package liquid yeast and activated it @ 3 pm. Finally pitched the yeast at 73 degrees, about 11:45 pm.

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This kind of begs the question: how long did it take your wort to cool, and what did you do to get it to cool?

If you place your pot in an ice water bath, especially if you're only doing partial boils, you should be able to get the wort chilled pretty darned quickly, not to mention the fact that topping off with cold pre-sanitized water can also help a lot.

I chilled it in an ice bath in the sink, about 3.5 - 4 gallons. I think I was not heavy handed enough with the ice in fear that the temp would go to far in the other direction (noob). It took about 3-4 hours to cool down.

Yeah, 3-4 hours is an awful long time...

Here's what I do (and someone's probably going to hop in and point out something wrong about it, but it's worked thus far):

Pre-boil some water and put it away to chill - I actually pre-boiled about 2 gallons, then put them into sanitized 1 gallon jugs and put them in the freezer just before I started my brew. Gave them plenty of time to get really cold, but not actually freeze.

Once my boil was complete, I took my pot (which had a little more than 4 gallons of hot wort), and placed it into my utility sink and filled up the sink with cold water, until the water level in the sink was roughly as high as the water level in the pot.

The entire time I was filling the sink, I stirred the contents of the pot in one direction and the cold water in the other direction. By the time the water got to my desired level (after about 5 minutes), the temperature was down 50 or 60 degrees.

I then emptied the sink and repeated the exact same exercise, dropping the temp about another 50 or 60 degrees.

I then emptied the sink again, but this time I dumped a couple bags of ice into the sink and 1 gallon of the now very chilled pre-boiled water right into the kettle. I then filled the sink with water again and resumed stirring pot and sink in opposite directions.

This way, the wort chilled to pitching temperature in roughly 15 minutes (I hit 74F). I definitely had to be very cautious not to let any water directly from the tap to get into the wort, and ditto for the ice, but this wasn't super difficult.

Now, I do understand that stirring the wort as much as I did when it was still hot may risk what I think is called hot-side-aeration. Thing is, I've done this for several batches now and not noticed any of the cardboardy flavors people associate with aeration and oxidation, so I don't think it's hurt my beer at all.

ESB 2 weeks in primary, decided to transfer to secondary for another week. Temperature has been between 64-72. Just been adding frozen water bottles to the cooler to control temp. Gravity is at 1.016, tried a little glass, stuff tastes pretty good. Also I bottled one 22 with some priming sugar just for the heck of it. I'll start my next batch of "Chico Ale" this weekend or next so that I have a steady supply of Home Brew

Feels great doesn't it! Welcome to the addiction!

Put the ESB in the Corny Keg on Saturday night. Had a little issue with not having the "out" ball lock connected when adding in the co2. Lost a quart or 2 of beer. All in the learning process. Plan is to force carb for 2 days @ 30 psi, purge and then set to serving pressure (7-10). Also brewed my second batch (Chico Ale). It's in the fermenter and bubbling away. Think I need to step up to a Glass Carboy real soon, currently in plastic buckets.

If you are looking into getting a carboy look into the 6 gallon Better Bottles. I have tried both and like the Better Bottles better using glass. There are plenty of pros and cons listed on this site to help you decide.

WarBac - why "step up" from buckets? I happen to use a BB and a glass carboy, but only because my brewing kit came with one and I "inherited" the other. There's lots of folks here who've been brewing with buckets practically forever.

Just saying, at this stage of the game, you might get more out of investing in other areas, rather than replacing perfectly good fermenters! Temp control, stir plates, wort chillers (assuming you don't already have one) are all good things to look into!