New Brewer from HI

Going to start my first brew tomorrow. Just got my starter kit and will be picking up my 5gal pot shortly. Hopefully all goes well. Will probably be hanging around here asking questions on what to do.

welcome...wish I was in HI right now

welcome, mj. i lived in pearl city for a while. i used to hang out at the pearl river

Welcome to the forums as well as the obsession!

Well i tried to find a pot. I ended up finding the last 30qt turkey fryer on the island. Guess I have my own propane burner now instead of a stove top. Any problems with doing a brew in a garage instead of a kitchen? Also everything I have read says to use the pop off top bottles. I have a 64oz big jug (a growler I believe) with a screw top. Its not a normal beer bottle twist. It has an actual cap. Would these be ok to use for bottling?

30 qt should work great, you will have enough room to do a 5 gallon batch. As for the bottling, you may want to grab a case or 2 of bottles from your LHBS. You can get them, caps, and a capper for fairly cheap. Based on the volume of your kettle, will need quite a few bottles. An even cheaper avenue would be to recycle some of the beer bottles you drink personally and save them for bottling, that way you only need to clean them up, cap them, and let them condition. Should save you $30 in the long run. Just be sure to sanitize the heck out of dem bugga's!

Already have a few enthusiastic friends working on the problem. Are the growlers ok to use though? Whole thing is done learned a lot of things to do differently.

have a question about cooling.




Have the fermentation bucket sitting in a tub with a little water and some ice packs. Was going to switch the ice packs twice a day. Normal house temp is around 75-80F. The blanket is to help it a little bit. Will this be enough to keep it cool?

General setup



A little brew over


Cooling it down

I dont see why they wouldnt work, you will just have a larger serving vessel to house the beer. Which would not seem like a problem to someone like myself! You just may want to grab a bag of new caps if you dont already have some. Brew on man!

Hey mj, I think your cooling method will work just fine. I keep my fermenter in a bucket kinda like yours and just cycle two 16oz. frozen bottles of water out in the morning and at night with the water level at about halfway up. So far its worked pretty good. I'm on my fifth batch right now (oatmeal stout). I'm in Mililani so its a bit cooler over here but I used the same method when I lived in Waialua. If you dont know already, you should check out Mike at Homebrew In Paradise he has everything you need and some good advice too. Good luck!

Welcome, glad to have you! Just ask, and there will be help!

Hey man, where do you live? I'm in Kailua.

I'm over on kbay. Mike sold me the starter kit. Really liked the service. Was willing to explained everything and made sure I knew what I was doing before I left. Had a question during the brew and called him up. He was happy to answer some quickbquestions. Will be going back for the next batch. Don't know what to make.