First Brew!

So I've recently got all of my brand new equipment, gadgets, and ingredients lined up. Set up my brew environment. Fixing to pull off my very first brew. It's an extract kit with some crushed grains included also. Here is the schedule I've drawn up from a few sources and printed off for myself to follow on the big day. Looking for any advice, adjustments, tips, or even just wishes of luck. Thanks!

Brew Day

Clean brewpot, stirring spoon. Sanitize teaspoon, yeast jar, fermentor/lid, airlock, hydrometer, strainer, turkey baster, measuring cup, and thermometer.

1. Prepare yeast.

a. Put 1 cup of warm (95-100F) boiled water into sanitized jar and stir in yeast. Cover with saran wrap and sit 15 minutes.
b. Boil 1 teaspoon extract in small amount of water. Allow cooling and add to jar. Cover and place in warm area.

2. Boiling and cooling

a. Bring 3 gallons of water to a boil in brewpot. Pour into fermentor and leave to cool.
b. Bring another 3 gallons of water to 175F in brewpot. Steep grains for 30 minutes while water is between 150-170F. Squeeze when removing from wort.
c. Bring wort to a boil and remove from heat. Dissolve malt extract in wort and return to rolling boil, stirring occasionally.
d. Wort will foam until protein clumps get heavy enough to sink back into pot. Will see particles floating in wort. May resemble “Egg drop soup.” This is the hot break
e. Wait for hot break to occur (5-20 minutes) and add bittering hops. Time for 1 hour.
f. Add half of the finishing hops with 30 minutes remaining in boil.
g. Add other half of finishing hops with 15 minutes remaining in boil.
h. Precipitate “cold break” via ice bath. Target temperature is 80F.

Take sample for gravity reading here.

3. Pitch yeast

a. Pour rehydrated yeast solution into water that is already in fermentation bucket.

4. Aerate wort

a. Pour cooled wort through strainer and into fermentation bucket aggressively so that it splashes and churns in the bucket.
b. Affix bucket lid and shake vigorously. Place airlock.

I'll be using a fine mesh strainer as well for mixing into fermenter. Duly noted on the steeping temperatures. Appreciate your fine tunings.

You don't have to sanitize the measuring cup or thermometer. Do you have any fermcap-s? You might want to use it when the hot break begins to form, especially if your pot doesn't have a lot of headspace. You don't need to take gravitity readings from an extract-only recipe. If you do, it will be 5/3 higher than you expect, excluding correcting for temperature. Also, if you are using liquid extract, add it at or near the end of the boil.

If you want a cooler pitching temperature, you can wait until the wort has cooled to ambient temperature (overnight).

Try to kelp your fermentation temps in control if possible; high fermentation temps acan produce off flavors, wort fermentation temps WILL be higher than ambient temps.

Ive also found you can do a lot of prep, cleaning, etc., while your steeping water is heating & while the wort us boiling. My first couple brew sessions took a really long time because I cleaned, sanitized, prep'd EVERYTHING prior to even putting my BK on the burner!

If I read correctly, you mention pouring boiling water into your fermenter (2a) - I'd advise caution on that. Whether it is glass, Better Bottle or a plastic bucket, boiling water can have a bad affect on it. I'd let it cool into the low 100°'s before I'd our it in.

Oh ya, Oh Ya, Cakes and Pies! Cakes and Pies!!

After this you'll go, brewing is easy! And it is, don't sweat if something 'goes wrong', following the directions, and you'll make beer.

BTW, the most important part you left off..... what the heck are you making?? and list out your ingrediants please. Kit or your own recipe?

I am new and for my own point of reference I question the " Squeeze when removing from wort" as pertaining to the steeping grains. Most of what I have read or seen in videos tells me do not squeeze grain bag. Can someone with more knowledge address that?

If you put the yeast in 95 degree water you will most likely cook it. Better to let the water cool to the upper end of the fermentation range before adding the yeast.

menerdari said:

I am new and for my own point of reference I question the " Squeeze when removing from wort" as pertaining to the steeping grains. Most of what I have read or seen in videos tells me do not squeeze grain bag. Can someone with more knowledge address that?

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I have also read that people squeeze the heck out of the bags with no bad flavors. I've squeezed probably harder than I should with no bad off tastes. I want to use up all that liquid

So many responses! I use this forum's Android app and I thought that I had this thread subscribed to. When I never got any more notifications, I never came back to check. I'm going to kick this (my first) brew off in about 6 hours so I'd just come back to brush up on a few things beforehand.

LarryC said:

If I read correctly, you mention pouring boiling water into your fermenter (2a) - I'd advise caution on that. Whether it is glass, Better Bottle or a plastic bucket, boiling water can have a bad affect on it. I'd let it cool into the low 100°'s before I'd our it in.

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I'll be using a bucket, and I plan to hit 80 degrees via an ice bath before dumping into fermenter.

sweed said:

BTW, the most important part you left off..... what the heck are you making?? and list out your ingrediants please. Kit or your own recipe?

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I'm using a simple Amber Ale extract kit that came along with the brewing kit that I purchased from Midwest Supplies. It does have some specialty grains with it so it's not straight extract. I also upgraded the yeast to Safale S-04. Plan to do a few of these before trying anything more difficult.

william_shakes_beer said:

If you put the yeast in 95 degree water you will most likely cook it. Better to let the water cool to the upper end of the fermentation range before adding the yeast.

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I do plan to cool the wort to 80 degrees F prior to dumping into the fermenter via ice bath.

bhfd64 said:

I'm using a simple Amber Ale extract kit that came along with the brewing kit that I purchased from Midwest Supplies. I also upgraded the yeast to Safale S-04.

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S-04 isn't a typical yeast for an American Amber Ale. It should still end up mostly clean. You might get some low esters and a hint of diacetyl because that's the character that the yeast gives (and people expect it in English Ales), but that character shouldn't dominate over the malt and hop contributions to an amber. You might end up liking this strain, but a lot of people go with American Ale strains for American Ales. Kolsch yeast is also popular.

If you like it, save a few bottles and brew it again with yeast such as US-05. Taste them side-by-side and choose the one you like.

LarryC said:

If I read correctly, you mention pouring boiling water into your fermenter (2a) - I'd advise caution on that. Whether it is glass, Better Bottle or a plastic bucket, boiling water can have a bad affect on it. I'd let it cool into the low 100°'s before I'd our it in.

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I've had to dump near boiling water into my fermenter on 2 occassions (wasn't planned) and while it isn't the best idea in the world, it worked out fine both times. I have a plastic bucket. I'd never do it with a glass carboy unless you like cleaning up sticky wort and pulling glass shards out of things. Why don't they start making those damned things out of Pyrex??

So I brewed this on Sunday. All went according to plan. I had some activity in the airlock within a few hours and had rapid bubbling by the next morning. About 3 bubbles per second. This continued through last night. Now this morning its all but stopped. Around 1 bubble every 10 seconds or so. What do you guys think? Should more be happening at this point?

bhfd64 said:

So I brewed this on Sunday. All went according to plan. I had some activity in the airlock within a few hours and had rapid bubbling by the next morning. About 3 bubbles per second. This continued through last night. Now this morning its all but stopped. Around 1 bubble every 10 seconds or so. What do you guys think? Should more be happening at this point?

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All's well. Just let it do its thing for a couple of weeks and you should have some tasty beer.

Right on, thanks guys.