Noob's first brew...

Hi All,

I've been doing a lot of reading on the boards. Some great info that's forsure...

So here's my story.

I brewed my first ever batch on Nov 24, 2011, it was a Cooper's IPA. The evening went off without a hitch other than my wife telling me she couldn't stand the smell of the brew boiling on the stove... lol.. too bad for her, I say!

Anyway, it's been fermenting away in primary and today I decided I would take a gravity reading. The OG was supposed to be 1.042 and my actual was 1.041. Today my actual is 1.010 and the FG is supposed to be 1.006, so I have a little more to go i suppose.

I did drink the sample that I pulled for the reading. It tasted great and was extremely clear to which I was surprised about. I did notice that there already was some slight carbonation in the sample which I wasn't expecting. It makes sense that there is (very slight carbonation), but I haven't seen anyone really comment on that in any of the threads I've read...

Hopefully I can get down to the FG soon so I can bottle and wait for at least another 3 weeks, patience is killing me, as it does with all noobs.. lol...

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Rich

I guess I better start cleaning some bottles today. Got them from friends, unfortunately I didn't ask them to rinse them out after drinking. So some have nasties at the bottom that I have to clean out.

Bought some oxy clean for the job. Just have to find a bottle brush.

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I had some bottles returned from a buddy and about half of them didn't get rinsed out. I soaked them in a big tub of water with a little bleach to sanitize and the crud lifted right off after an hour or two. Beats scrubbing! Just rinse well to make sure all bleach or oxyclean is gone.
Welcome to your new obsession!

Sounds good so far. Enjoy when the time comes!

B

Wait another week then take your gravity readings. The yeasties are still working. They will clean up the beer even more in clarity and taste. Patience is tough but well worthwhile.

Get another fermentation vessel and get more beer in process. It is great to be able to go to the fridge and have a choice between several styles.

Why is it that the women do not like the smell of the boil? After taking 13 years off and doing my first batch in early October, when I smelled that boil again it was a great. My fiancee now is from Colombia and she loved it. It reminded her when she was a little girl and they were boiling sugar cane down on the farm. Gotta love a women like that..

So, two days later and my gravity is still at 1.010 so it's probably done. I'll leave it till tomorrow since I still haven't cleaned all my bottles.

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BrewHound said:

I had some bottles returned from a buddy and about half of them didn't get rinsed out. I soaked them in a big tub of water with a little bleach to sanitize and the crud lifted right off after an hour or two. Beats scrubbing! Just rinse well to make sure all bleach or oxyclean is gone.
Welcome to your new obsession!

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Bleach and oxyclean do not do the same thing. Bleach is a sanitizer and oxyclean is a cleaner (detergent.) You need to use both a cleaner and a sanitizer since if you sanitize crud in a bottle the crud can still be there and only the top layer of it will be sanitized. You still have potential for infection underneath.

If you soak just about any brewing equipment (don't use on aluminum) in a hot oxyclean bath you won't have you scrub. I fill, shake, soak for a while, shake again, and drain. I'll take a cloth to my buckets to get any krausen gunk that may possibly be left but other than that it's good.

Then, once it's thoroughly rinsed I sanitize it. You can use a no-rinse sanitizer like iodophor or starsan, or bleach but you have to rinse and let dry or else beer that comes in contact with it will smell or taste like chlorine.

At 3 weeks it sounds done to me or most of my beers would be bottle bombs. There not.But use your hydrometer.
Especially with a 1.04 gravity i would think 3 weeks is definatly done. i almost bottled my english pale bitter around that at 2 wks, but my grain shipment is coming in later than i thought.(First bulk grain sack -Great Western Pale Ale)So im going with the three weeks like i usually do.Been jonesin to brew.And looking foward to see how the wlp005 liquid british yeast is from my english bitter.

Finally got around to bottling my first batch today. I took some tips from revvy's bottling thread. Attached my bottling wand to the spigot and used my dishwasher door to catch any spills. Took me 3 hours from set up to filling my last bottle. Had a total of 52 bottles.

Now to wait. <sigh>

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So today is the one week mark for my beer in bottles. So I figured what the hell lets give one a taste. I actually put it in the fridge Thursday morning and drank it today at around 2pm.

So obviously one week isn't going to be a long enough time to carb up properly however it did have more carbonation then it did a week ago on bottling day. Although when cracking the top it did give a nice co2 opening sound.

So I'll open another in another week to compare the changes and then I'll open another ion week 3.

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Steeltowndubber said:

Finally got around to bottling my first batch today. I took some tips from revvy's bottling thread. Attached my bottling wand to the spigot and used my dishwasher door to catch any spills. Took me 3 hours from set up to filling my last bottle. Had a total of 52 bottles.

Now to wait. <sigh>

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That's how I do mine, works great. I have the bottles in the dishwasher after running through the heated rinse cycle. I can just pull them out and fill them, about 8 at a time before I run out of space between my bottling bucket and my capper. Cap those, move on. Takes about an hour and a half including boiling and cooling my priming sugar. Having the wand on the spigot makes the whole thing a one-handed operation.

I can never wait more than two weeks to test my first bottle, but I'm always happy with them! They only get better, they might even peak after a couple of months, but (a) I brew hoppy, so I like that young freshness, and (b) they don't last that long.

Steeltowndubber said:

So today is the one week mark for my beer in bottles. So I figured what the hell lets give one a taste. I actually put it in the fridge Thursday morning and drank it today at around 2pm.

So obviously one week isn't going to be a long enough time to carb up properly however it did have more carbonation then it did a week ago on bottling day. Although when cracking the top it did give a nice co2 opening sound.

So I'll open another in another week to compare the changes and then I'll open another ion week 3.

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Click to expand...

So how'd it taste!

It tasted pretty good. Hoping it gets better with age.

The one thing I did notice is that near the end it had this very slight floral/sweet aroma.

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