First post, a few questions and comments

Well a buddy and myself brewed off a batch yesterday and now I feel like calling myself a noobie would be an insult to the members of this forum, after seeing that many of you don't use a kit for your first brew. We use a kit using malt extracts and now it seems like we took the easy way out for no apparent reason. Kinda disappointed in myself for not "starting from scratch".

I now have quite a few ideas about the next round and I am going to asking alot of questions as I learn.

We used the following in our batch:
Muntons Nut Brown Ale Canned Malt Extract
3 Lb of Muntons Plain Amber Malt Extract
1 Lb of Plain Light Malt Extract

I made a mistake of not taking a OG reading .I've been reading and I am going to the local brewshop this week to pick up a Wine thief as recommend by people on this forum. I actually did take a sample but I think did not record the reading before it was pourn out. I was told by the local brew shop that an estimate can be made by the known ingredients.


Now if I take gravity reading in 7-10 days for a few days in a row without change then I will be ok to rack to the secondary, right?

Also when it comes time for bottling would there be any advantage to use corn sugar over malt extract for priming sugar?

Also I have "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing" by Papazian but I would like to have another book to use as a guide. Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Bart

Don't beat yourself up over using a kit beer for your first brew. Most of us started out the same way. Hell, I still buy kits from time-to-time. They might be all-grain but they're still kits. They're a great way to introduce yourself to the hobby and usually produce a very good beer in the end. Nothing wrong with that.

If you take three consecutive hydro readings without change then you are safe to bottle or transfer to a clearing tank for bulk conditioning. However, I recommend that you leave the beer in the primary for a week after fermentation has completed so the yeast can finish cleaning up some of the off flavors produced during fermentation then transfer to a clearing vessel for bulk conditioning.

Corn sugar is fully fermentable so you don't need to use as much as you would if you used DME. Here is a link to a calculator that'll help you figure out priming rates for a wide variety of brews.

http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html

As for books, check out "How to Brew" by John Palmer and "Brewing Classic Styles" by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer.

+1 on the advice from eddie. patience is a good thing in brewing. once you bottle it, you'll be better off to let it condition for a couple weeks.

Some people suggest the 1-2-3 process:
1 week in the primary fermenter
2 weeks in a secondary fermenter
3 weeks in the bottle

Oh, and another great source of info is Palmer's "How to Brew" - available online at www.howtobrew.com (a more recent version is available in print, but the online version is great)

Good luck with your brewing.

There is no right way to get into brewing, it just matters that you do.

You will continually learn as you brew so just take what you have learned already and build from there.

Once you bottle it and drink some it won't matter where it came from just that you made it.

if you want to take it a step further, look into un-hopped extract plus steeping grains. Just as simple, better beer. Oh and read howtobrew as mentioned above

Dude you suck as a brewer and I advise you to quit now......


You think Einstein never screwed up on calculation the tip on a bill? Chill bro! You have a long journey into madness ahead

Thank you all for the info and I will be picking up Palmers book quickly.

Mike who do you think would win in a leg wresling event between Einstein and Steven Hawking???

Thanks all,


Bart

Speedfreaks101 said:

Thank you all for the info and I will be picking up Palmers book quickly.

Click to expand...

Hey Bart, if you go to www.howtobrew.com you can read it online. Then buy the book later because you feel so bad about using up all Palmers bandwidth, like me.

Seabee John said:

Hey Bart, if you go to www.howtobrew.com you can read it online. Then buy the book later because you feel so bad about using up all Palmers bandwidth, like me.

Click to expand...

Thank you sir, very much!

my only comment is that the 1-2-3 method is good, but it also assumes your fermentation has indeed completed after 7 days in primary.

so you do still need those final gravity readings, 3 days of consistent gravity at or near your estimated final gravity.

that said, if you're not going over 1.060, and you pitch yeast at optimal rates/temps/aeration, your fermentation should be done after 7 days for an ale.

lagers...whole different story