First batch, and a question

Brand new to home brewing. I was about to buy the stuff I needed to get started, and my only local home brew shop owner went on vacation for a couple weeks. So, I had time to read through this forum, and also read the Complete Joy of Brewing.

Feeling prepared, and having a long list of stuff I wanted for my kit, I went in and found he was really pushing for me to just buy the True Brew kit with the two plastic buckets, and a Munton's hopped extract kit. He told me to run a few batches through that before I started getting into carboys, hops, and such. I left feeling kind of deflated, since I had this whole setup in my head, and now wasn't going to be doing it the way I imagined.

However, deciding to make the best of it, I started my first batch of Munton's American Light on Friday night (May 28th). Almost instantly, I realized the wisdom in my local shop owner's insistence on not over-complicating things. This first batch was an exercise in learning to sanitize, how to deal with big buckets of hot liquid, and generally getting the procedures down. So I'm not deflated anymore.

Anyway, per some instructions the owner gave me, I started with 5 gallons of bottled water. I did the boil with one gallon of water, and two cans (about 6.5 pounds) of extract. Boiled for 20 minutes. Put two gallons of water into the fermenter, tossed in the wort, and topped off. Stirred, and let it cool down. Around 80 degrees F, I took an OG (1.046) and pitched the dry yeast. Stirred for a minute or so, and covered. Using a 6.5 gallon bucket, so I just attached a fermentation lock. Woke up the next morning, about 6 hours later, to the lock bubbling away happily. The air above the lock smells like beer when it "burps", so I guess that's a good sign.

Going to secondary (this time, again it's an exercise in the process) in a little more than a week if the fermentation is done.

What have I learned? I immediately see the need for a wort chiller. I waited forever for the wort to come down to 80F. I was shooting more for 75, but I couldn't stay up any longer. I hadn't planned on the ice bath, so I didn't have any handy, since I had chilled the top-off water. I guess it wasn't chilled enough. Anyway, the yeast don't seem to have minded much.

My question: I noticed, as I was adding the water to the fermenter, that the gallon markings on the side of the bucket are off. I had only added two gallons, and it already said three on the side of the bucket. In the end, I put in 4.5 gallons of water, plus two cans of extract. The bucket said it was more than 5 gallons, which I can't imagine was right. So right now, I don't really know how much volume I'm working with, since I don't know the final volume of the wort. I'm inclined to think everything's going to be OK. But if I did end up a little short on volume, anything I need to watch out for as I go along?

Thanks!

Andy

You should be fine. Keep at it! Hopefully you're going to be happy with your first beer, but if not, know that you can make the best damn beer in the world with enough practice. Your OG looks decent so I think you'll be just fine. Getting accurate volume readings is important, but I wouldn't be worried on your first brew. If you don't know the OG you were trying to hit, then it doesn't matter much now does it?

Variance in water additions will only modify the flavor and ABV of the finished product, more water less ABV and a thinner flavor and vice versa. About the only other thing I can think of is a variance in bottling, if you have substantially less water you would want to scale back the priming sugar to prevent bottle bombs. Oh and if you have a lot less water, you get to worry about cleaning and sanitizing fewer bottles.

Did you consider the volume of the extract you used? It will contribute to the overall batch size.

Congratulations on your first brew!

Congrats on your first brew and welcome to the pit of obsession that is homebrewing!

Your beer should be fine, I agree with prOcess about making sure your priming sugar matches your finished volume!

I would like to add that your plan to go to secondary after a week may not be needed. Here at HBT there are a lot of brewers(myself included) that do not follow the "mandatory" secondary fermentor idea. It is not wrong by any means but it can provide more opportunity to contaminate your beer.

Most brewers use a secondary for dry hopping, adding fruit/flavorings, or for lagering/clearing beers.

My personal preference is to ferment for 3+ weeks then condition in the bottle for 3+ weeks and my beers have been pretty good so far! Keeping your beer in the primary gives the yeast a chance to "clean" up any unwanted "stuff" they may have left during initial fermentation.

This is of course my opinion and no matter what you do just keep on brewing!

It is pretty widely accepte that bucket markings are usually off. Oddly, the ones I get from More Beer seem to be pretty much dead on, go figure.

Target OG: I was pretty much working blind. The target OG and FG on the kit assume using their instructions, which were only 3.3 pounds, plus sugar, plus water. My LHBS owner wisely advised me to ignore those and use twice as much extract, and gave me his own instructions, but they didn't include a target OG.

I'm going to have to find some way to figure out how much volume I actually have. I hadn't thought about the bottling sugar problem. I certainly don't want these to explode on my friends, since then they'll never take any in the future. And I certainly don't want the bottles exploding in my closet, either. I guess I can compare against the second bucket, with an actual measured amount, rather than relying on the bucket markings.

And... this time I kind of have to secondary. I know it's usually not needed, especially with this simple kit. But, I used my bottling bucket as my fermenter, so I need to get it out of there. Heh. The LHBS owner's instructions were ferment in the bucket with the spigot, rack to the other bucket for secondary, rack back to the spigot bucket for bottling. I could go old school with the racking cane to bottle filler, but I'd rather set up something like Revvy's bottling system, which looks much easier.

Anyway, I'm not overly worried. But good advice on the bottling sugar thing. I wouldn't have considered that. Thanks!

-Andy

Well, I just did some rough calculations in Beersmith and for you to get an OG of 1.046 using 6.6lbs of extract you would need about 5 gallons of water! (I am assuming you stirred the wort well and also adjusted for the temperature when you measured the OG.)

Now these are the numbers in Beersmith but the software is usually pretty accurate with this stuff so I am thinking you are really close to having 5 gallons of wort in your fermentor!
Looks like you should be just fine but you don't have to take my word for it!

Congratulations on your first brew!

the next thing to pay attention to is Fermentation temperature. Since you pitched at 80F, that beer fermented fast and hot (truly, the yeast were happy, but will give you off-flavors, and hot-alcohol esters).

Wort Chillers, ice, get your temps to the mid 60s if you can, even low 60s. It will take longer for the yeast to take off, but you will be rewarded with much better beer.

Search for fermentation chillers, fermentation control and read up - there are many methods for controlling the temperature, many of them very inexpensive. For instance, a large bucket from Wally World that will hold your fermenter, filled with water, with frozen water bottles for temp control...

oh, and Welcome to HBT!

Hang Glider said:

Congratulations on your first brew!
the next thing to pay attention to is Fermentation temperature. Since you pitched at 80F, that beer fermented fast and hot (truly, the yeast were happy, but will give you off-flavors, and hot-alcohol esters).

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By 6 hours later, the wort was at 74. Then, it dropped to be consistent at 65/66 degrees in my basement, which pretty much maintains that temp year round. Still bubbling, just not as quickly. Will longer time in the bottle help even out any potential off-flavors from the hot beginnings?

-A

I'm not sure, but I don't think so unfortunately. Yeast want nothing to do with alcohol, so they won't be taking in those fusels and breaking them down or anything like that. I don't think laying it down for a long time in the bottle will help either. Hopefully your first batch tastes ok! Would be discouraging to dump your first one.

I didn't say anything because you already had decided on your own that having a wort chiller would be handy. But yeah, I would shoot for your basement temp at least before pitching next time. Siphon ice water through the chiller if you need to.

KevinW said:

Well, I just did some rough calculations in Beersmith and for you to get an OG of 1.046 using 6.6lbs of extract you would need about 5 gallons of water! (I am assuming you stirred the wort well and also adjusted for the temperature when you measured the OG.)

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I did, yes.

Also, I downloaded the trial version of Beersmith. That's a pretty cool program. For fun (and to tell me the amount of bottling sugar needed) I put in the recipe I'm making, based on the profile on Munton's web site for the American Style Light extract. Is there any way to determine the hop weight for these hopped extracts? Munton's lists the IBU range, I didn't know if there was a way to work backwards from that.

-A

Update: I finally had time to take my first hydrometer reading since the yeast have been active. The beer has been in primary since May 28th (10 days) at this point. The airlock burps every 10 minutes or so. I plan to move it over to secondary as soon as I know the hydro readings are the same. Will be taking my second one in two days. As I said above, I have to secondary because I'm brewing in my bottling bucket, due to initial lack of hardware. I'm all set now.

Anyway, opened up my bucket carefully, expecting disaster. It looks really good! The krausen has disappeared, just some little clusters of happy looking bubbles floating around. I Star-Sanned my beer thief, took a sample. The hydro reading is 1.019 now. OG was 1.046. So it's coming along.

I went ahead and tasted it, thinking it was going to be green and awful and weird. My wife and daughter watched with their fingers over their eyes. I was really surprised. I would drink this now! I can't wait to see what further conditioning does.

Now I'm actually nervous about possibly screwing up my sanitation along the road. This part has been easy, and I haven't been worrying since I figured this first batch wouldn't taste very good anyway. Now, I'm walking on eggshells since I don't want to screw up 5 gallons of something that already tastes so good! Oh well. I'll relax, and just make sure to coat everything liberally with sanitizer.

I'll keep you posted. Thanks for the helpful hints so far!

-A

I'd say, if you're still bubbling often enough that you can see it, leave your beer alone (don't even take readings)

cool! glad to hear it's coming along..

like you, I pitched my beer at about 80 degrees, following the included instructions. I am anxious to find out how it will taste after hearing that it may produce off flavors... but the best part about being a n00b is that i dont know what it's supposed to taste like in the first place to determine what's off. heh heh.

as long as it's good and drinkable.. i'll be happy.

keep it updated as to how it turns out, you're about 10 days ahead of me and my first batch.

krelin said:

I'd say, if you're still bubbling often enough that you can see it, leave your beer alone (don't even take readings)

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How often is too often, as far as bubbles go? Or should there be no activity in the lock at all?

I usually only catch one burp now, and then I sit and watch it trying to time the interval, but I get bored after a few minutes of inactivity and walk away. For all I know, the bubble I see could be caused by vibrations of me walking over to the fermenter and shaking a little CO2 loose.

-A

I'd literally wait until the top of your airlock is sitting flat everytime you check (when there's some activity happening, you don't even need to wait for bubbles, you can tap the cap of the airlock and if there's no pressure underneath it it'll just be sitting flat on the tube that goes into the fermenter)... after a day or two like that, start taking gravity readings, I think. Take my advice w/ a grain of salt, though, I've only done two batches so far.

Since I'm a newbie, I'll explain my rationale better: you want fermentation to run uninterrupted and untainted for as long as possible. If there's still pressure under the cap of your airlock, you've still got good activity going. Taking readings early just introduces opportunities for your batch to be contaminated or oxygenated.

You can't really go too far wrong by erring on the side of leaving your beer alone for an extra week or two (some people here will even say an extra month -- autolysis seems to be very rare on such short primary fermentation cycles), before bottling.

ARittner - Not sure what happened to your yeast, but 1.019 from 1.046 and low airlock activity indicates under-attenuation. If you're air lock is not doing anything you should be 95% done fermentation. With a 70% attenuating yeast your finishing gravity should be 1.014. I don't think you're going to get there. It's possible the high pitch temp has something to do with this. I would leave it another day or two and take another reading. If you're still reading 1.019, bottle it.

nathani said:

ARittner - Not sure what happened to your yeast, but 1.019 from 1.046 and low airlock activity indicates under-attenuation. If you're air lock is not doing anything you should be 95% done fermentation. With a 70% attenuating yeast your finishing gravity should be 1.014. I don't think you're going to get there. It's possible the high pitch temp has something to do with this. I would leave it another day or two and take another reading. If you're still reading 1.019, bottle it.

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I'm not sure the air lock isn't doing anything. It sure isn't bubbling often, but there is pressure there. When I replaced the airlock after my last reading, the floating cap was sitting on top of the tube. Within a minute or two, it was pushed back up against the cover of the airlock. So there's still CO2 trying to push out, just not very much. Should I wait until that cap doesn't float up anymore, before I assume that fermentation is done and take another reading?

Also, I used the two packets of the Munton's dry yeast that came with the extract kits, so I have no idea how good they were.

-A

ARittner said:

I did, yes.

Is there any way to determine the hop weight for these hopped extracts? Munton's lists the IBU range, I didn't know if there was a way to work backwards from that.

-A

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I don't think you can do that with pre-hopped extracts, without someone divulging their hop schedule. I would think that using un-hopped extracts and then adding your own would be better(not cheaper though).

It would take a little research to find the hop variteties used for the style you want but beersmith makes it easy to calculate a good schedule for your beer!

KevinW said:

I don't think you can do that with pre-hopped extracts, without someone divulging their hop schedule. I would think that using un-hopped extracts and then adding your own would be better(not cheaper though).

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Oh, there's all kinds of things that could be better. Using my own hops, DME for bottling instead of corn sugar, and so on. My LHBS guy just shook his head and handed me the hopped extracts. Said to use those for the first 2 or 3 batches. Like I said in my first post, I was annoyed at first, but now see the wisdom in learning the basic process, sanitation in particular, before worrying about the other details.

-A

I agree. Keep going with those kits for another batch or two. Get that sanitization and fermentation process down. Bottling is going to be fun, sanitization is key here too! If you're still enjoying it (not just the drinking part, but the brewing too), then step yourself up to extract and add your own hops. These will be simple recipes. Next try steeping some grains and full wort boil (wort chiller as well). You can stop here, but if everything is still looking good, go for the all-grain. From here it's an endless slippery slope of DIY projects and visa transactions, haha.

I've seen far too many people invest lots of money in brewing equipment and it end up at a garage sale. You seem enthusiastic, so I hope it lasts!

Another update

Racked to secondary last night. A friend who's given up on home brewing gave me a couple glass carboys, so I went from my bucket into a 5 gallon carboy. Before I racked it over, I filled it to 5 gallons from another jug whose markings I knew were good. I painted a little 5 gallon line on the thing. You'll note in the beginning, I didn't know the volume of my batch, since the markings on my brew buckets are way off.

Turns out I'm at 5 gallons on the nose, minus a tiny bit that is probably the result of my 3 hydro readings. The last one last night is still at 1.019, which is the same as it was 3 days ago.

Seeing as this was an all-extract batch, there wasn't much trub. Just a fine smear of yeasty stuff at the bottom, and the usual chunky ring around the bucket above the waterline.

The racking process itself was easy with the auto-siphon. Cleaning the carboy initially was a pain in the butt. My friend hadn't used his in a while, and they'd been sitting in his basement or garage, and had kind of a funky growth on them. So I made sure I Oxycleaned then Star-Sanned. I'm adding one of those sink-attached carboy washers to my shopping list. Getting the Oxyclean in was no problem. Getting the soapy foam out, was.

So, now it's settling away in the basement. I forgot to cover the carboy, I'll do that when I get home. Other than that, I think everything's going OK.

-A

You can always use carb tabs if you're too worried about making bombs.

Nice work. I think your first batch is going to be a success. Sounds like you did everything right. Just leave in secondary a few days to clear and one final reading at 1.019 and bottle it!

A tip on the Star San and carboys. Just roll it around (don't shake), try not to make too much foam. When draining, make sure to swirl it and get a good whirlpool going on, this will evacuate most of the foam. The rest that is left does not need to rinsed. Star San is no rinse, and rinsing will just increase your chance of infection. The foam does not contribute any off flavors and it's actually supposed to break down into yeast nutrient or so they say. I leave the foam and I haven't noticed anything.

WAdamC said:

You can always use carb tabs if you're too worried about making bombs.

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Well, I wasn't worried. Why, should I be? Is it because the SG isn't where it should be?

I'm hoping a couple more weeks and some warmer temps will wake up my lazy yeast so they can finish off this batch.

-A

nathani said:

Nice work. I think your first batch is going to be a success. Sounds like you did everything right. Just leave in secondary a few days to clear and one final reading at 1.019 and bottle it!

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Thanks!

A tip on the Star San and carboys. Just roll it around (don't shake), try not to make too much foam. When draining, make sure to swirl it and get a good whirlpool going on, this will evacuate most of the foam. The rest that is left does not need to rinsed. Star San is no rinse, and rinsing will just increase your chance of infection. The foam does not contribute any off flavors and it's actually supposed to break down into yeast nutrient or so they say. I leave the foam and I haven't noticed anything.

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Yeah, I'm not afraid of the Star-San foam. There was actually kind of a lot left, because I mixed the Star-San in my carboy, and then racked from there to my sanitation bucket to sanitize my siphon. Last night the beer had a nice head of Star-San foam on it, but that's all gone now. The foam I had a hard time getting out was from the Oxyclean. And that, I assume, we don't want to leave in the mix.

I like the Star-San a lot. I wish I'd had it when I started. The stuff I was using smelled like bleach, and I really wanted to rinse everything off. But, I have untreated well water, and didn't want to introduce any bugs. With the Star-San, I don't feel like I need to worry about it anymore. Good stuff.

-A

oh, that's good. I misread, yeah rinse the oxyclean off well. Wouldn't worry about bottle bombs, if your FG is static, you should be fine.

There are a few scenarios that you might end up with bottle bombs:
1- Add too much sugar bottling... duh
2- You somehow killed your yeast and you add yeast back when bottling (easy to avoid)
3- Your temp is way too low and the yeast are inactive and you raise your bottle temp up high (don't think this is the case)

Like I said I'm a little concerned with your SG-FG, attenuation is pretty low. I would expect that FG on and SG of like 1.070. Not sure why the yeast quit early. Could be a nutrient and/or oxygen issue. Or maybe those yeast packets are like 5 years old (do they have a date on them?). To late now though (well that's not true, but we'll keep it simple on your first batch). You've been tasting those gravity reading samples right? Are they tasting really sweet?

nathani said:

You've been tasting those gravity reading samples right? Are they tasting really sweet?

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I don't know that sweet would be the right word. They are tasty though. There's kind of a weird "other" flavor there too, but it isn't unpleasant. I figure it just isn't done yet. I'm going to let it hang out in secondary for a while. It's supposed to warm up again this weekend, so maybe that'll wake the yeast up again, if they got too cold. I'll do a couple more SG's before I bottle to make sure it's done.

-A

Hmm, not sure what's going on. If it's not sweet then there aren't any simple sugars left, so that's good. Still not sure why the FG is so high, but yeah just go with it. See how it turns out. If your next batch ends up high, then we can look deeper into the cause. If your beer doesn't carbonate in the bottles that's a good clue that something happened to the yeast. See how it goes I guess.

Was wondering today if I accidentally murdered the yeast before I even started. I had left the extract kits, with the yeast packets, in my car for a day or two, being distracted by life in general. It's summer, I'm sure the car got pretty hot. NOW I read that it's not a bad idea to keep the yeast in the fridge until use. Maybe I killed a few of them? I don't know. It's also down to 62/63 in the basement. They may just be taking their time.

It probably won't be a total disaster. As long as it isn't deadly poison, I'm happy.

-A

Bottling night! I have been spending almost the last two months reading these boards, and took what I considered the best ideas from various people here. That being the case, bottling went really well. It took forever, although I'd say 75% of the time was setting up and sanitizing.

I took my final FG before I added the sugar. It was 1.013, so I ended up pretty much on target. OG was 1.046. I had some concern midway through the batch about the high SG after my primary, but I think now it was because my basement got so cold for a week. The temp down there came up this week, and it looks like the yeast finished their job.

Somewhere along the line, I lost about a half-gallon. Not sure how that happened, I guess sampling, and not taking every last drop from the carboy, so that I didn't suck up the swirling trub.

So, the bottles are away in some tubs (in case of explosion) and in the warmer area of the basement. It's about 90* upstairs, so the 70-72* in the basement will have to do.

Anyway, thanks for all the help throughout the process! I'll let you know how it turns out in about 3 weeks.

My next batch is a Belgian Wit extract kit, which I suppose I'll get started in a couple days.

-A