First Batch - Boiled off a lot of h2o

Hello. This is my first batch, and I've read a lot of RDWHAHB. Just looking for insight from others first experiences and what problem I may be having. Disclaimer: I think I have most of the terminology down, but please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Bought the Personal Home Brewery Kit #4 from Morebeer.com. Very happy with it, came with pretty much everything I need.

Came with a "Light Ale" kit. Had 6lbs Light LME, steeping grains, yeast, Whirlfloc tablet. It comes with an 8gal brew kettle. I stove-topped it over two burners, started with about 6.5gal of water. I have a 6gal plastic fermenter, but came up with maybe 4 gallons (about 2/3 of the fermenter).

Used a wort chiller, well cleaned the night before, brought the temp from 215-220F to 70F in about 20 minutes.

I drained the wort through a sanitized steel mesh strainer to catch the runoff hops and a little bit of the grain that steeped through the included mesh bag. Not sure if I was supposed to do that (ferment with the hops/break sediment strained out). The wort was crystal clear for the first 3ish gallons into the fermenter.

I didn't shake it to aerate it. More or less let the wort drip from the tubing through the mesh onto the funnel and drip into the fermenter. I wasn't sure completely about aerating it, but I felt like it was probably enough (though I've seen some Youtube videos of people shaking the fermenter vigorously).

Been fermenting at 62F-64F as well controlled as it can be (Being New England, it was 80's last week and now hitting 30-40's overnights, I have it fermenting in a bucket of water, controlled by adding hot water/iced bottles to maintain 60's range.)

Lag time was about 18 hours, been fermenting steadily since (Sunday-today, 4 days). The top layer of foam never really rose much, and its got a yellowish tinge to it. There's a ring of gunk about an inch from the top of the wort, which I assume is from the krausen.

Though it's not even near bottle time, just looking for insight. Other than the obvious overboiling. Makes me wonder if I caramelized the wort.

OG at racking to fermenter was 1.042 at 70F.

Thanks!

Did you boil for the length of time recommended by the instructions? And was your OG about what you were expecting to get?

All-in-all, sounds like everything went pretty well. You can expect plenty of boil-off if you were boiling for a longer period of time, so starting with 6.5 gallons of water and ending with 4 gallons is possible. Not sure if you topped-off to reach 5 gallons, but that wouldn't have been necessary if your OG was on target.

You don't have to worry about caramelization too much since you were doing a full boil. The effect is more noticeable if you are boiling your entire extract in a smaller amount of water (partial boils).

Letting your wort drip into the fermenter is ok, but I would recommend doing some vigorous stirring or shaking to make sure it's well-aerated. Proper aeration of the wort is what makes sure you are providing the yeast a good environment to go to work.

Straining your hops/grain leftovers to keep them out of the fermenter is fine. Some people leave them in, some don't. In some cases it may just depend if you want the cleanest beer possible.

Hopefully the above notes help you out or provide some insight. Overall it sounds like you had an excellent brew day. And in the end.. it'll be beer. So, you're right: RDWHAHB

Thanks!

The recipe actually specified the OG should be between 1.038-1.042. After looking up a temperature conversion table it would theoretically be 1.044 (assuming those any any accurate, I looked at my How To Brew by Palmer to calculate).

I feel like maybe I didn't aerate it enough, but I guess we'll find out in a couple weeks.

Thanks for sharing!

Sounds normal to me. I wouldn't worry about it much. When did you add the malt extract in?