bobwantbeer
Well-Known Member
Me and my buddy attempted to brew our first batch two nights ago. Neither of us have experience of any kind other then what we've read in the last three weeks since the idea came to us. After a certain amount of reading we both got to a point where we couldn't apply what we were reading without getting some hands on experience. I watched some instructional all grain videos online,(if anyone has links to particularly good one's that would be nice) obtained materials and ingredients, and dove right in. We decided to start all grain because that's all we're interested in brewing in the future. I'm a fan of the "**** your pants and swim" policy for almost everything. As I predicted the endeavor was mostly a disaster. First, I was given a false bottom mash/lauter tun by a homebrewing aquaintance of mine. However right before I started my mash I put to bottom in and realized it didn't fit firmly around the edges. There was room for grain to seep around the edges and clog the spout. Perhaps I should have used grain bags but from what I've read and seen on video it seemed like the grain was supposed to be dumped right in. So the mash bin got clogged so I couldn't drain anything out of it. So I had to dump it through a strainer which got messy and too much grain left the bin and entered my kettle. I sparged as best I could by holding the grain back from the spout with a spoon and ladling on the h2o. My boil seemed to go ok other than we didn't have the proper amount of water becuase it was too hard to get it out of the ****ing mash bin. I got the coagulated egg drop soup **** like I was supposed to. The wort chiller I made worked effectivley, but then everything went to hell afterwards. We had a funnel and filter on top of the carboy and were pooring through it, however we had so much **** in the kettle that it clogged. I didn't want to touch it for fear of infection so we paused, used sterile tongs to shake out the crap, which loosened the filter so when we began pooring again it popped off, allowing some crap into the carboy. That's when we said **** it we have what we have and grabbed the yeast. I read the label on the yeast and it said to remove it from the fridge 3-6 hours before use. Ours was out for about 45 seconds before it was put in. So I have about 3.5 gallons out of what should have been a 5 gallon batch presumably fermenting right now. We put the fermentation lock on at 4 am wed morning and it was bubbling slowly as of 10 pm wed night. For whatever thats worth. So if you made it through this long post and have comments I need them. I don't know nearly enough to really brew anything right now. If you're in the chicago area and want to allow me to see how you do things that would be sweet too.
